Roses in the Snow
by PrayWaits
Summary: Team RWBY has been assigned to each other, and the clashing personalities have some... growing pains to get through. In Roses in the Snow there will be wholesomeness, friendship, love, and war. The gods and origins of the world have been changed from canon, and we'll get to know the bad guys on a much deeper level. And Team RWBY may not be able to stop them.
1. Seeding 1-1

"_From this day forward you will work together as Team RWBY, led by… Ruby Rose." _

Weiss fought to keep the tears from her eyes as Professor Ozpin's words from this morning played in her head over and over.

Led by a child! Her, Weiss Schnee, being commanded by a little girl that probably couldn't tie her own boots!

Rationally, she knew that she didn't really know Ruby yet, and even Weiss had to admit that the girl had been impressive taking on the Nevermore in the Emerald Forest, but it was far easier for her to be angry at Ruby than it was for her to be disappointed in and ashamed of herself. She'd been here a total of three days and already she was failing.

Her father had despised her plan to go to Beacon and be a huntress from the start. The only reason he'd agreed to it was because Weiss assured him she was going to be the best huntress of their generation, and that doing so would bring renown to the family name.

But this…

If Father found out that Weiss had been supplanted by a fifteen year old that was here two years up on _scholarship_…

Luckily, her father cared very little about her anyway, and hadn't bothered to check in at all. Maybe he never would! As long he paid her tuition for her to forge her own life, it didn't really matter how he thought she was performing, right? Other than to her shattered pride.

But what if he did find out? What if he found out about this and decided the whole idea was ridiculous and forced her to pack her bags and come home tomorrow? If he messaged or called and asked how everything was going, should she lie? How easy would it be for him to find out that she wasn't the leader of her team? Did the academies post their rosters as public information?

Weiss needed to do some research and find out. She pulled out her scroll and stared down at it for a few long moments.

'_But first…'_

She flipped to her contact list and selected one of the two people on her favorites list. She glanced around to make sure she was still alone. Sure enough, the dark, empty classroom she had ducked into to be alone with her thoughts was still both dark and empty.

She hit call.

_Ring. Ring. Click._

"Hello, Weiss," responded the familiar, comforting voice.

Weiss held in a sigh of relief. It wouldn't due to broadcast her emotions right now. "Hello, Winter," she replied.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Oh." Weiss wasn't actually sure what she wanted to say to her sister. She just knew she needed her guidance now. After a moment of consideration, Weiss decided to start at the beginning. Winter always preferred having context.

"Well, we were given our trial to determine our teams today."

She heard what sounded like a folder snapping shut on the other end. "Oh?" Winter asked, her interest clearly piqued. "And how did that go?"

Weiss huffed out a laugh. "Oh, it was fine. Professor Ozpin launched us off a mountain into a forest filled with Grimm for a treasure hunt," she explained nonchalantly.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Weiss figured she'd get an amusing reaction from that.

"Yes," she elaborated. "There were launchpads on the edge of a cliff that we had to stand on and get thrown into the Emerald Forest. We were tasked with finding chess pieces, of all things."

"Weiss, I wanted an actual update, not whatever this strange excuse for a joke is." The doubt in Winter's tone of voice, however, betrayed the fact that she suspected Weiss was telling the truth.

"You think I would make a joke like this?" Weiss countered.

Winter gave a noncommittal "hm" in response.

"It was no problem, though!" Weiss continued. "Landing was easy with our glyphs."

"I'm glad to hear it. Did you remember to start small and only put more power into the glyph when you stepped onto it?"

Weiss smiled. Winter staying true to form. "Of course, Winter."

"Good, good. What happened next?"

Weiss sighed. Her story kind of took a dip here. She kicked her feet under the desk she was sitting on.

"Well, you see, Professor Ozpin told us the first person we saw would be our partner for the next four years…"

"_What? _What kind of system is that?!" Weiss knew that Winter had very little regard for the huntsman academies that weren't Atlas, and this story likely wasn't helping.

"I'm not really sure," she admitted. "I was hoping to find Pyrrha Nikos first, but-"

"Oh, Miss Nikos is attending Beacon?"

Weiss smiled. Perhaps that would help Winter have a bit more respect for the school Weiss had chosen. "Indeed! Do you know her?"

"Know _of _her, yes, of course," Winter clarified. "She is a prodigy. General Ironwood likes to stay informed on all talented huntsmen and huntresses." There was a small pause. "He's asked about you several times."

_Uh-oh. _Weiss felt this heading down familiar territory. It was nice to know she was being asked about, though.

"I wasn't able to explain to him your decision to attend Beacon instead of Atlas," Winter continued, "mostly because I did not understand it myself…" Her voice trailed off, the implied question hanging heavily in the air.

She sighed heavily. "Can we not do this again, Winter? I promise I have my reasons."

Winter echoed Weiss' with a sigh of her own. "I know, little sister. I just wish you would share them with me."

But how could she, when Winter was the _reason_ Weiss didn't want to go to Atlas? If Winter thought of Pyrrha as a prodigy… It wasn't even a display of humility for Weiss to admit that she was nowhere and hadn't ever been anywhere even close to Winter in talent and power and skill. It was simply recognizing indisputable facts. How could she try to make a name for herself if she attended a school where she would just be constantly living in her sister's shadow?

To accomplish her goals, Weiss needed to go somewhere where her first name mattered more than her last. Atlas Academy would be just another place where the Schnee name already carried its own weight, albeit because of her sister instead of her father.

The pause stretched uncomfortably as Weiss refused to give Winter an answer. Winter had only ever been helpful and supportive to Weiss; Weiss refused to admit to her that she was also her biggest source of self doubt.

Eventually, Winter cleared her throat and got the conversation moving again. "From how you said it, I'm guessing you didn't find Miss Nikos first?"

Weiss laughed awkwardly at that. "No, no I most certainly did not."

_How in Remnant do I even explain Ruby?_

"So who did you end up finding instead?" Winter prompted her.

Weiss took a deep breath. "A girl-a _fifteen year old _girl named Ruby Rose."

Winter's confusion was audible when she asked, "How was someone so young with you? She is a student, yes?"

It took a moment for Weiss to figure out what her sister might be envisioning. She laughed at the image of herself just stumbling upon some random child out in the woods and being stuck with her as a partner. Ozpin seemed just crazy enough that he might possibly enforce that.

"Yes, yes," she explained through her giggles. "She, uh… Apparently she is here on scholarship from personal invitation by Professor Ozpin himself."

"Oh. Wow. I've never heard of a headmaster doing that," Winter wondered aloud. "She must be impress-"

"She's a _child_!" Weiss snapped, her frustration erupting out of her.

There was another heavy pause before Winter let out a long breath. "Ah," was all she said.

Weiss felt her anger boiling in her veins. "She's a klutz, she's immature, she has _no _sense of timing or communication or _fashion _or-" Weiss quickly cut herself off as Winter's reaction registered to her. "'Ah?'" she demanded. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Winter was silent for a long while. "I... " She trailed off. "Nothing, I'm sorry. Please continue, Weiss."

What had Winter wanted to say? Weiss didn't have the patience or desire to figure it out, though, as her frustration came rushing back.

"She nearly killed us both by _sneezing_ on my Dust case in front of the school, she attacked out of turn and almost made me set the forest on fire, her plan to kill the Nevermore was the most _ridiculous _thing I've ever seen-"

"You took down a Nevermore?" Winter interrupted.

"Yes, the two of us and two other girls that ended up getting assigned to our team. One of them is apparently Ruby's sister, though they look absolutely nothing alike. I have no idea how that works."

That was one of the most confusing things about the past few days. Yang and Ruby didn't look _remotely_ related, and they didn't even have the same surname! Weiss assumed there was some sort of deranged story there. They probably weren't actually sisters, just really old friends of something. As Weiss understood it, friends calling each other siblings was a thing amongst the uneducated.

"Well, taking out a Nevermore on your first day is quite impressive. Congratulations."

Weiss took a deep breath and smiled. Her sister was not one to simply dole out compliments, and Weiss felt a swell of pride in her chest at the praise.

"Thank you," she whispered, her anger seeping away.

"Of course, Weiss. What happened next?"

With her anger gone, Weiss could only hang her head in shame as she recounted the next part. "Then the teams got announced before the whole school. In front of an _entire_ auditorium, the headmaster announced that I wasn't good enough, and gave the title of team leader to a _child_."

Her voice broke on that last word, and she clenched her fist as tears threatened to spill over.

"Oh, Weiss," her sister sighed.

That brought a tear out. Silently, though. Despite her feelings about her father, she was still a Schnee. Schnees can't be seen or heard crying, even to each other.

_Deep breathes_, she told herself. _Count to five. _

It took her to the count of seven before she felt confident that her composure wouldn't crack before she spoke again. Winter was respectfully silent as she waited.

"What will I do when Father finds out?" she whispered. "What if he cuts me off and makes me go back home?"

Winter didn't respond at first. Weiss heard what sounded like a chair squeaking as Winter sat down wherever she was.

"Don't worry," she reassured Weiss, her voice heavy with sincerity. "If he does, just let me know and I will cover your school bills."

Weiss blinked, stunned.

"You would do that?" she asked breathlessly.

"Of course, Little Sister. You deserve a chance to forge your own life. I just want you to promise me you'll do your best, regardless of who is paying the bills."

"Always," Weiss promised immediately. "But… Winter, can you afford that?"

Weiss realized that she didn't really know how much Winter made as a Special Operative in the Atlas military. Nothing anywhere close to the family fortune, that was for sure. But her apartment was nice! But…

She began to worry as Winter stayed quiet.

"Winter?"

"Yes. Yes, I can afford it." There was a pause, and Weiss realized her sister was trying to figure out how much she wanted to say. "I would need to make some… changes, but it would be worth it to make sure you have this opportunity."

All at once, the tears she'd been holding back came flowing out of Weiss in silent waves of love and guilt.

"Then I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it doesn't c-come to that," she swore, sniffing halfway through her sentence as her composure broke down.

"I believe you, Little Snowflake."

Her breathe hitching in her chest as she transitioned into full blown sobbing, Weiss wiped furiously at her eyes before pinching herself in the arm, trying to force herself to stop crying.

Nothing had changed. Weiss still was going to be the best. She _needed _to be the best. She couldn't allow a world where her sister paid the price for her inadequacy.

Weiss sobbed quietly for several minutes, tightly clutching her scroll and the comfort of her sister's presence that it brought her. Winter stayed silent the entire time, waiting patiently and supportively.

Eventually the knot in Weiss' chest loosened as her grief poured out. Her eyes dried, and her breathing fell back into its normal rhythm. Sensing the change, Winter gently spoke up.

"I love you, Weiss," she said.

"I love you, too," Weiss whispered back.

Winter cleared her throat, and Weiss heard the clacking of keys on the other end of the call. "Now, you said her name was Ruby Rose?"

Weiss smiled, realizing what her sister was doing. "Mhm."

"Let's see here," Winter muttered to herself. "Hmm."

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "What is it?" she whispered conspiratorially.

"She went to Signal Academy before this, a fairly well regarded intermediary school. Her… hmph. Her grades are pretty lackluster."

"There's a shocker," Weiss muttered.

"_But_," Winter continued, "her performance scores in battle are actually incredibly high."

Weiss grunted begrudgingly. She supposed she could concede that the girl could handle herself fairly well when she wasn't getting Weiss to set the forest on fire, or trying to show off by soloing a Death Stalker.

"Let's see next of kin to see about that sister," Winter narrated her search. "Ah, is this sister of hers a Miss Yang Xiao Long?"

"That's the one."

"It would appear they are half sisters. Miss Xaio Long uses their father's surname, but it seems Miss Rose uses her mother's."

"Ah." That explained it. Kind of. It still seemed highly unorthodox.

Weiss jumped as she heard something slam on Winter's end of the call. "Qr-!" shouted her sister, before growling angrily.

_That_ was a noise Weiss had never heard from her sister before.

"What is it?!" she cried. What could possibly be wrong with Ruby to get that kind of reaction for the ultra-composed Winter Schnee?

"Weiss, this Ruby wouldn't happen… she wouldn't happen to wield a greatsword or a scythe, would she?"

Weiss blinked, confused. "Y-yes, a scythe that transforms into a high-caliber sniper rifle. Why do you ask?"

Winter stayed silent for too long.

"Winter," Weiss pressed, "do you know her?"

Her sister let out a long breath. "No, no. I know her uncle."

"Oh." Weiss wasn't expecting that. "Is he… bad?" She couldn't imagine why Winter would react this way to this revelation.

"He's a drunken idiot," Winter answered flatly.

"Oh," Weiss repeated. "Well… I guess that fits…"

Winter sighed. "_But_, and you CANNOT tell anyone I said this… He is also incredibly powerful and skilled."

Weiss nodded. Talented fool seemed to be a running theme in her new partner's family, then. "More than you?" she teased.

When Winter didn't answer, Weiss' eyebrows shot up.

"Winter?"

"It appears that Miss Rose studied under her uncle at Signal," she said, bulldozing past the question. "If she is a good learner, then she will be quite a formidable teammate. I doubt she's a Miss Nikos, but you should still have quite a bit to work with."

"You think I should work _with _her?" Weiss asked incredulously.

"Well… yes, Weiss. She's your teammate now. What else would you…?" Her question trailed off in confusion.

Work _with_ this child that bumbled her way into this prestigious academy? Why couldn't Weiss just focus on getting better herself and supplanting this kid as team leader?

Winter seemed to sense something from Weiss' hesitation to answer. "Weiss, Atlas and Beacon may be very different schools, but one thing that is universal is that your teammates are like a second family. A _first _family for people like you and me."

Weiss wasn't sure what to do with that explanation. That sentimentality was something that Winter only expressed when talking about Weiss. Winter and Weiss both shared their distaste for their father and what he's done to the family company and name, but to say that she'd found another family in her academy team?

"Do you feel that way about your own team?"

"I… yes."

Weiss digested that new bit of information. Winter wasn't the type of person to just throw around ideas and emotions like this. "You never talk about them."

"No," Winter replied simply.

What was she supposed to make out of that? Weiss opened her mouth to inquire further, but before she could even figure out what to ask, Winter pushed on.

"Give your team a chance, Weiss. I know you are disappointed you aren't team leader, but don't let that spoil the relationships you should be making with these people. You'll be fighting through hell together soon enough, and…" Winter broke off. "It's important that you get to know them and trust them, if nothing else."

"Okay…" Weiss conceded. She wasn't really sure how she was supposed to go about doing that, but if Winter wanted her to try, then she'd try.

The fact that Winter had changed the subject away from her own team hadn't escaped her, but Winter clearly didn't want to talk about it, and Weiss knew she should respect that.

"Now, go," Winter directed her. "Today is your first day with your new team, people your life is going to depend on more times that I care to relate in the next four years. Go be with them."

"Okay!" Weiss replied, with much more confidence this time. "I will."

"Good. Keep me updated, and be well, Weiss."

"You too, Winter. I love you."

"I love you, too." The line clicked.

Winter sighed. She'd rather go back into the Emerald Forest than suffer through the social akwardties of getting to know new people, especially unclassy, rambunctious fools like Ruby and Yang. Blake seemed okay, though. She was quiet, and in a way that made her seem thoughtful rather than the opposite. Perhaps Weiss should start there.

Weiss pushed herself off the desk and to her feet, trudging out the door.

As soon as she opened the door, a blast of air hit her in the face, pushing back her ponytail and skirt as a shower of flower petals materialized in the air and a streak of red raced past.

"WE DID IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" shouted the shrill voice of Weiss' new team "leader".

Weiss sighed and hung her head, staring dejectedly at the floor. _This_ is what she was passed over for for leader. Maybe this wasn't as complicated as she thought. Maybe Ozpin was just an idiot. She wondered if Winter would agree with that assessment.

Yang came skipping around the corner Ruby had just blasted from, laughing happily.

"Oh, there you are, Weiss!" the buxom blonde remarked. "We got the keys to our room, here!" She tossed a tiny scrollcard to Weiss, who stopped it in the air near her with a glyph before gingerly pinching it between her fingers.

"Our _room_?" she asked. "Singular?"

Yang skipped past her, following the trail of rose petals her sister left behind. "Well, yeah! We're going to be roomies!"

Weiss blinked in disbelief as Yang's golden hair bounced around a corner and out of view.

"They're going to be a handful," said a voice next to her, causing Weiss to jump. She turned to see Blake standing not even three feet away from her.

_Dang, she's quiet. _

Weiss used the back of her hand to smooth out some wrinkles in her skirt, and pulled on the knot in the thick ribbon tied around her waist that served as a stylish belt.

"I'm sure we can handle them," she said confidently, putting on a false smile.

Blake chuckled and walked after their teammates.

"I'm not."

Weiss' lip curled in amusement as she followed. She noted the scent of roses that lingered lightly in the still air of the hallway.

_Oh, Grimm. If our lives end up constantly smelling like a bouquet, that's going to be _really _annoying._

How did Ruby's semblance even work? What exactly was she turning into when she turned into a red, speedy blur that seemed to shed flower petals?

Then again, Weiss was the last person that should be confused by other people's semblances. The glyphs were one thing, but the summoning that Winter was capable of that Weiss had yet to master was so strange and abstract that Weiss often wondered if it was some sort of fluke by the universe. _And_ it was hereditary, apparently the only case of that anyone has ever heard about. A part of Weiss hated her semblance: yet another thing defined by her being a Schnee. The more rational part of her that was grateful for such a powerful and versatile ability often took a back seat to that voice of self-loathing.

Shaking herself out of her train of thought, Weiss looked at Blake up ahead of her and wondered what her semblance was. She hadn't noticed her use any extraordinary powers out in the forest that Weiss could remember. Unless she counted the incredible balance, coordination, and athleticism that Blake demonstrated against the Nevermore.

Should she ask? Was it a normal conversational ice breaker to walk up to people and ask, "Hello, would you please tell me what your semblance is?" Probably not, right? That seemed personal.

Dust! How was she supposed to get along with her teammates when she had pretty much zero experience meeting and bonding with people? Weiss couldn't even remember if she'd ever met anyone her own age. Private tutoring and a sheltered pseudo-prison of a home led to an atrocious ability to know how to deal with people. The only time she ever saw anybody outside of her family and tutors was… There was when she visited Winter, but she didn't interact with many strangers then. There were the visits to the Schnee manor when board members came for business talks and presentations with her father. Weiss scoffed at herself for even noting those events.

Oh! There were the couple of concerts she'd performed at. She'd met other kids her age then. She hadn't really talked to them, though. And the ones she was around backstage had all shied away from her like she was contagious or something.

Weiss sighed. All she had was Winter. And she supposed Whitley existed, but she thought of him as family about as much as Father. Their mother was an alcoholic mess that had drowned in self pity and depression and wine long ago and was never the same since.

Winter told her that her team would be her new family, but did Weiss even know what that was supposed to mean?

"Hey."

She looked up to see Blake looking at her thoughtfully, waiting for her to catch up.

"You okay?" the girl asked.

Weiss took a deep breath, then put on a smile, one of the ones the Courtesy and Decorum tutor had drilled into her. "I am, thank you for asking."

Blake, for her part, raised an eyebrow at Weiss, before nodding once and accepting the answer. She gestured down the hallway and said with a small smile, "Sounds like our favorite sisters have gotten us lost."

Weiss tilted her head to try to hear what Blake was talking about, but couldn't until they had resumed walking for a while and turned a corner.

"... no idea where you're taking us!"

"What do you mean? I was just following your lead!"

"_How_, Ruby? I was _behind_ you!"

"Yeah, but you said 'The dorms are this way!'"

"Yes, and then you ran off and took, like, eighteen apparently _random_ turns because you insist on being first!"

"Well, yeah! I gotta be! I'm Team Leader!"

Yang's hearty laugh rang out, and Weiss realized the two sisters were just around the next corner.

"That's all well and good, Cap," Yang said. "But figure out _where _you're leading us to first, yeah?"

"Okay, fine! Where are we going, then?"

"I don't know!"

"Yannnnng-uh!"

Blake and Weiss reached the two bickering siblings, Blake wearing a highly amused grin.

"Oh, hey guys," Ruby greeted them sheepishly, silver eyes downcast while she gave them a quick little wave. "We're just, uh, discussing directional stuff and… things."

"Stuff and things," repeated Weiss.

"Yup!" Ruby chirped. "More stuff than things if we're being totally honest, but don't tell Things that. He's sensitive."

Beside her, Yang nodded at Weiss solemnly.

Weiss couldn't help rolling her eyes. "Ruby," she said, "look through the window of this door." She gestured at the door they were standing beside, and when Ruby peeked in through the rectangular window set in the wood, Weiss asked, "What do you see?"

Ruby scratched her head before turning back to Weiss. "Uh, a classroom?"

"Yes."

Ruby's brow furrowed in confusion. "So? We already know this isn't our room, silly."

Weiss sighed. "Ruby, this is a _class _building. Why would our _dorms_ be in a _class_ building?"

Ruby shrugged innocently. "I don't know! I guess we need… a dorm building?"

"Exactly!" Weiss cried in exasperation. "We need to find the dormitories!"

"Okay, I'm sorry! I've never been anywhere like this, okay?" Ruby swung her hands around in frustration.

"Everyone, calm down!" Yang interrupted. "Especially you, Blake. Chill."

Blake's eyes went wide and she blinked twice.

A goofy grin spread across Yang's face before she continued. "The question here is _where_ are the dormitories, Weiss?" The girl turned her lilac eyes on Weiss.

Weiss scoffed in response. "Well, _I _don't know!"

"Well then that's not really helpful then, is it?"

Who did this top-heavy commoner think she was? Weiss stamped her foot and put her hands on her hips. "Listen, you-"

"Guys."

Blake's quiet voice cut through the argument, and everyone turned to her. She held up a couple sheets of paper. "They had maps back in the auditorium."

"Welp," said Yang. "You probably coulda mentioned that before, you know."

Blake chuckled softly. "I was kind of curious to see where exactly Ruby was taking us."

Ruby scratched her head and laughed nervously. "Well I led youuuu…. right where I wanted to! Right here, so we could all have this great moment together to realize the Blake is the only one here that knows what she's doing!"

Weiss scoffed at that, but Yang laughed. "Well, as long as one of us does, the rest of the team should be okay, right?"

"Exactly!" Ruby replied with a bounce.

Blake smiled at Ruby and handed one of the two maps she was holding to their leader, then slid over to Yang, the closest person to her, to share her map.

Ruby stepped next to Weiss, who tried not to scowl when she was assailed by the scent of roses. She leaned over to get a better view.

She spotted the label of the auditorium, and the attached "Class Hall 1".

"I'm guessing we're here," she said, pointing it out on the map.

Ruby nodded. "And we need to get where?" she asked, turning her big silver eyes on Weiss.

Weiss frowned. _I suppose I can't be mad for not knowing if she's asking for help._ She went back to scouring the map to find the dorms.

"Looks like there are two dorm buildings," Blake remarked.

Weiss nodded, noticing the same. "We're probably in this one," she told Ruby, pointing at the map again.

Ruby leaned into the map and squinted. "Eff arr dorms? What's that mean?"

"Probably stands for freshmen," Weiss explained, trying to stay patient at what she viewed a stupid question.

"Ooooooh, that makes sense. Let's go!" She lifted up one knee in a dramatic running pose and started to run down the hallway.

"Hold up there, champ!" Yang chuckled, grabbing Ruby by the hood at the last possible millisecond.

"Hngh!" said Ruby as she was stopped in her tracks by her ridiculously tattered cape.

"So where are we going?" Yang asked Weiss and Blake. Ruby continued to struggle against Yang's pull, apparently still trying to run off. Yang didn't seem to have any trouble holding her in place, though.

Weiss frowned as she looked up and down the T-juncture of hallways they stood in. "The first step is getting outside."

"Then heading east," Blake finished.

The three older girls all nodded to each other while Ruby continued to flail noisally.

"Alright, Ruby," announced Yang, suppressing a laugh at her sister's antics. "Find us an exit out of here and then come back, okay?"

"'Kay," came Ruby's strangled response.

Yang let go of her hood and she was gone with a whoosh and a shower of rose petals.

"Couldn't we just-"

Yang cut Weiss off with a wave of her hand. "Just give her a sec, trust me."

_Trust._ Winter had told her she'd need to trust her teammates. She might as well start practicing that now.

"Okay." She hugged her arms to herself and leaned a shoulder against the wall to wait.

'_Schnees don't lean,'_ she heard her father's voice in her head. She jerked herself upright and away from the wall.

Her teammates seemed startled by the motion.

"You… okay?" Yang asked her, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

Weiss blushed, embarrassed, and set her gaze down at the pointed toes of her high heels. "I.. yes. I'm fine."

"Ooookay," Yang replied before turning away, clearly not believing her.

_Great. _She's on a team with Ruby "Crater Face" Rose and now her teammates are going to think _she's _the weird one.

A rush of air filled the hallway, and Ruby practically materialized in front of them, a flurry of petals spinning into the three of them. Weiss waved them off with a scowl as Ruby chirped, "I found it!"

Yang clapped her fondly on the shoulder. "Lead the way then, Cap." When Ruby started her big running wind up again, Yang stopped her. "But, uh, maybe at our pace, yeah?"

Ruby pouted. "But you're so slooooooow!" she whined like a child. "Except for Weiss when she uses her super circles!"

"Hm?" Weiss was thrown off by what had sounded like a compliment.

Ruby skipped backwards as they followed her down the hallway, keeping eye contact with Weiss. "Your circle thingies that you use to go super fast and bounce around and stuff! They're really, really cool!"

Weiss smiled shyly. "Oh, thank you. They're called glyphs. At least, that's what my sister and I call them."

Ruby gasped, still skipping backwards. "You have a sister, too?!"

"I do."

"Is yours as awesome as Yang?"

Weiss couldn't help but smile at how loving and simple the question was, while Yang beamed with pride. They might have a strange surname convention, but these two sisters definitely seemed to love each other.

"_More_ awesome," she answered Ruby, the twinkle of a challenge in her eye.

"Nuh-uh!"

"It's true!"

"Could she take Yang in a fight?"

Weiss laughed at the simplistic form of comparison. "She could take _all _of us in a fight," she replied honestly.

"Nuh-_uh!_"

Weiss simply smiled and nodded. She looked over to see Yang wrinkling her nose and Blake looking at Weiss questioningly.

"Where is she now?" Blake asked softly.

Weiss smiled at the question. It was nice to be able to brag about her sister. "She's in Atlas. She's a Special Operative in the military there."

"_Special Operative?_" Ruby repeated breathlessly. "Whoa. That sounds AWESOME!"

"She is very awe-watch out!"

Ruby's backwards skipping brought her right into a wall, the back of her head hitting it with a loud _thunk!_

"Owwww-uh!" she scowled, rubbing her head and disheveling her already messy hair. It took her a moment to realize her teammates were giggling and snickering at her.

"Uh, heh," she stammered nervously. "This way!"

She skipped off down the side hallway. She didn't seem to remember the lesson she should have just learned, though, because she quickly ended up turning and skipping backwards again.

"You know, I've seen Yang punch an _Ursa_ through a tree before," she said. "Can your sister do that?"

Weiss chuckled. "I don't know. She tends to use more… finesse than that."

"Alright you two, no need to be measuring sisters," Yang interjected. "It's not a competition."

"It's not much of one, no," Weiss teased.

"Hey!"

Weiss shrugged innocently in response.

"Do you have a sister, Blake?" Ruby asked.

Blake seemed surprised she'd been brought into the conversation. "Oh, no. I don't."

"What about brothers?"

Blake's expression remained blank. "No, none of those either."

"Oh," Ruby said sadly. "That sounds lonely."

_Wow, this girl has absolutely no tact._

Blake offered a small smile and nod. "It can be, yes."

Nobody seemed to have anything to say to that.

After a long moment, Weiss decided to offer something to the silence. "I have a brother, too, actually."

"Whoa, you have a sister _and _a brother?" Ruby asked incredulously.

Weiss nodded with a laugh, unsure why Ruby thought that was so strange.

"Is he awesome like your sister, too?"

"Ha! No, not at all. He's mostly just obnoxious."

"Oh." Ruby looked unsure how to respond to that. It seemed like the concept of an un-awesome sibling had never occurred to her. "Well," she said after a moment, "I'm sure you'll end up awesome like your sister!"

Weiss blushed, not knowing what to do with such a compliment. "Th-thank you."

"I dunnoooo," Yang drawled. She held up one hand, palm to the ceiling. "Weiss?" She raised her other hand. "Obnoxious?" She teetered her hands back and forth. "She sounds kinda like her brother." She ended her insult with a big grin at Weiss, who did her best to try to glare daggers into the girl.

"Yang-uh! Don't be rude!" chastised Ruby.

Yang laughed at that. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Weiss. I was just teasing."

"Hm," was all Weiss said in response.

They reached another T intersection, and this time Ruby thankfully noticed before suffering another head collision. Weiss suspected Ruby had very precious few of those left available to her before something critical got damaged. She darted off to the right, and as the rest of the team followed her around the corner to find wide glass doors that led into the Beacon Courtyard.

"Ta da!" Ruby exclaimed, spreading her arms out wide like she was presenting something much more impressive than a door.

"Nice work, Pipsqueak," Yang said, ruffling Ruby's hair as she passed.

Seriously, did _nobody _else see this girl's hair? It needs _help_, not more people messing it up.

Yang held a door open for all the rest to pass through. Weiss gave her a polite nod as she did, before turning and once again falling in love with the Courtyard. The clean cut lawns that flanked the pristine white stone walkways that were bisected by a simple yet elegant fountain. And all the students! The fellow young huntsman and huntresses all there to learn and better themselves, bustling about individually or with their teams. Impressive buildings stood far enough from the courtyard that it didn't feel crowded, but close enough to lend to the air of education and aspiration.

Weiss smiled. She could get used to this.

"Okay!" Ruby declared from behind her. "Before we go find our room, who wants to get something to eat? I'm reeeeeeeally hungry!"

Weiss sighed, raising a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes.

This was going to be a long four years.


	2. Seeding 1-2

Man, Beacon is beautiful!

Ruby looked around the courtyard, heart filled with pride and gratitude to the universe that her life had brought her here.

These buildings were so tall! And that fountain looked soooo pretty! And that girl's bunny ears are adorable!

Ruby could have stayed there bouncing up and down in excitement forever, but then her tummy grumbled. Like, loud.

"Okay!" Ruby announced. "Before we go find our room, who wants to get something to eat? I'm reeeeeeeally hungry!"

Did she need to ask her teammates for permission? Could she just invoke the executive powers of Team Leader and order the team to go get food? Did she need to?

Yang clapped her on the back (a little too hard, but telling her that only ever made her grin and flex and kiss her bicep like an absolute weirdo). "Food sounds great!" she agreed. "Let's find the cafeteria!"

Blake spoke up quietly from behind her. "We do still have not one, but two maps of campus on us."

Ruby snorted. "Yeah, or we could not cheat and just go on an adventure to find it!"

Weiss turned around and gave her The Glare. "We literally just figured out where we are and where we need to go, and you want to get us lost again?"

Hmph, that was a good point. But there was no way Ruby could admit defeat already!

"Yeah!" she said, giving Weiss a big smile to try to get her to relax. "We already know we can get ourselves un-lost, so why not?"

"But if you're really hungry, wouldn't you want to find food as fast as you could?" Blake asked, her forehead creasing like she was really confused.

Durn, another good point.

Ruby narrowed her eyes in thought, trying to figure out a good argument against that. Was there one? She was sure there was. Yang told her all the time that her greatest superpowers weren't her semblance or her wicked Crescent Rose skills, but actually her Cookie Annihilation and the ability to argue about anything!

Before she could come up with anything, though, Weiss sighed dramatically and drawled, "Well I don't feel like wandering around all day, so I'm just going to tell you the cafeteria is that building." She pointed at the building just to the left of the main tower at the end of the courtyard.

Stupid Weiss. She must have cheated and looked at the map!

"Well you're no fun," Ruby grumbled at her as she trudged off in the direction she'd pointed.

She'd just meant it as a joke, but Weiss huffed. "Some of us aren't here to just have fun, Ruby," she declared in her 'I'm better than you and you're just dumb' tone of voice.

Does Weiss just not want to have fun? That wouldn't make any sense though, would it? Was Ruby not supposed to be having fun? Did having fun make her a bad huntress?

Yang seemed to sense something from her silence, because her sister put her arms around her and shot Weiss a glare. "She's not here just to have fun, Ice Queen. She's here to save the world! Doesn't mean she can't have fun doing it!"

Ruby smiled up at her big sister. She was right! What would be the point of saving the world if everyone in it was just grumpy all the time?

What if everyone in the world was like Weiss?

…

Yikes.

"Fine," Weiss finally grumbled at Yang. "Fun is okay. But getting lost for no reason when we should be unpacking is not fun."

"Perhaps Weiss would like to go get started unpacking while the rest of us eat?" Blake offered, her eyes flicking back and forth between everyone's feet.

Weiss nodded once. "That sounds lovely," she declared.

Yang dropped her arm from around Ruby's shoulders. "Yes, yes it does," she growled.

"Wait!" Ruby stopped walking, causing Blake to almost bump into her. "No! That's not okay!" She can't let one of her teammates-her partner!-be by herself on their first day as a team! "I can go with Weiss!"

"But weren't you the one that wanted food?" Blake asked.

Durn. She was hungry. But Weiss was her partner!

Yang grabbed Ruby's hand and gave it a light tug. "Come on, Ruby. Ice Queen probably just wants to be alone."

Ruby looked up at her sister again, confused. "Why would anyone want to be alone?"

She turned and looked back at Weiss, who met Ruby's gaze with wide eyes and an expression that Ruby couldn't figure out. They locked eyes for a long moment, Ruby doing her best to smile and make Weiss feel like she was wanted.

Weiss glanced down at her scroll and frowned, then looked back at Ruby. "I'm sorry." Her gaze dropped to her feet and her voice dropped to a whisper as she said something else that Ruby couldn't hear.

"What was that, Weiss?" Ruby asked.

Weiss cleared her throat, raised her eyes to Ruby's again, and squared her shoulders with a deep breath. "I said you're right, Ruby. We're a team now. I should… we…" She frowned as she couldn't figure out what she wanted to say. "Let's go eat," she finished, giving Ruby a forced smile.

A strange sadness crept into Ruby's heart. She wasn't sure why, but something about the way Weiss seemed to be having to force herself to be a teammate made Ruby want to frown.

She didn't, though! She gave Weiss a big smile. Maybe if Ruby gave Weiss enough real smiles, Weiss would find some of her own.

"To the food!" She pointed to the cafeteria with a superhero pose, then dashed ahead of her team. She let herself slip into that bright core she held within her that she always visualized as a glowing red rose, and her semblance took over. The world turned red and her body felt like it fractured, no longer physically there, but she still felt like she could move herself around. She tended to think of it like her body was on another layer of the world right now, and on this layer she was nothing but a bunch of rose petals.

She ran to the cafeteria, her pseudo-legs pumping as she cut through physical space. As she moved, she both released waves of wind around her and felt the air flow through her. She was, quite literally, lighter than air right now.

Man, her semblance felt awesome.

It only took her five seconds to blitz across the courtyard, and when she reached the building she jumped up in excitement. When she was airborne while in her semblance, she couldn't technically "run" because her pseudo-legs couldn't touch the ground, but she could will herself to move by pouring her Aura into the movement. It was slower than running by quite a bit, but she had much more control over her direction this way because she was basically moving with her mind.

She flipped over in the air and dove back to the ground. Before she hit the stone, she reached out with a pseudo-hand, briefly marveling at the weird, disconnected feeling it brought her, like she was touching the ground through layers and layers of tissue paper. She dropped her feet down and threw her other hand out to the side, just like in the comic books.

Epic three point landing!

She pulled herself back out of that core and rematerialized into the world. The weird whoosh through her limbs as she displaced air made her huff in discomfort. It wasn't super uncomfortable! It just felt really weird, and sometimes Ruby wished she had enough Aura to stay in her semblance forever instead of dealing with that strange itch inside her body.

She opened her eyes, the red tint on the world now gone. Rose petals were slowly spiralling down around her from the spot she'd jumped up to.

"Whoa! That was awesome!" came a female voice with a really cute accent from behind her. Ruby hopped to her feet and turned around to see the pretty girl with the cute bunny ears she'd noticed before.

"Thanks!" Ruby chirped happily. Should she introduce herself? Say 'Hi, I'm Ruby' and, like, shake her hand or something? That's what you're supposed to do when introducing yourself, right? Unless she shouldn't introduce herself. Maybe cute bunny girl just wanted to say Ruby's semblance was awesome and then go back to her day. What if-

"Nice to meet you! I'm Velvet," bunny-girl-Velvet said, reaching out a hand.

Phew! When the other person went first it was soooo much less stressful!

Ruby shook the outstretched hand enthusiastically. "Meet to nice you! I'm Ruby!"

Velvet giggled at something about that (though Ruby wasn't sure what she'd said that was funny, but she smiled anyway), her bunny ears bending and straightening out like they were laughing too. "I remember seeing your team getting announced. Ruby on Team RWBY. That'll get confusing. You guys got the white knight pieces, right?"

Velvet's accent was awesome. It was so fun to listen to!

"Yeah! Yang liked the cute little ponies!"

Velvet laughed again at that. "Yeah, the relics for our class were tiny Grimm statues. We got the Death Stalkers."

Tiny Death Stalker statues? "That sounds awesome! Can I see them?"

Velvet smiled. "Sure! We've got them on the bookshelf in our room. I'll show you some time."

Wow, making friends here was super easy!

"Hey, Velvet, right?" she heard Yang greet her new friend behind her.

"Yes!" Velvet said with a wave. "We met on the ship here, right?"

"Yep! Sorry if Ruby ran into you or something. We haven't installed a brake system on her yet."

"Yang-uh!"

Velvet giggled again. "No, no. I just thought her semblance looked really cool!" She looked back at Ruby. "That is your semblance, right?"

"Of course! What else would it be?"

Velvet gave a big shrug. "Who knows, man? They've been doing some crazy stuff with Dust lately. Have you seen hard-light Dust?"

Ruby blinked. "No, I-"

"You've used hard-light Dust?" Weiss asked, clearly interested.

Velvet smiled and nodded excitedly. "I've been using it to make my new weapon! Or, trying, at least. It's pretty confusing to use and they haven't discovered and published all it's properties yet, so I'm mostly just experimenting. It's, like, really expensive, though, so I can't do much yet."

Weiss nodded thoughtfully at that.

"I've gotta run, but have fun on your first day, guys! Remind me to show you those figures later, Ruby!"

Ruby bounced and gave her a wave. "For sure! Thanks!"

As Velvet sauntered away, Ruby turned to her sister. "She's really nice!" she stated simply.

Apparently, Velvet was still close enough to hear-darn those bunny ears!-because she turned and flashed a shy smile at Ruby as she continued on her way. Awkward!

What happened to normal knees, Ruby Rose?

Yang wrapped an arm around Ruby's shoulders with a chuckle and guided her into the cafeteria.

WOW! This place was huge!

The floors were an off-white tile with streaks of reds and yellows and blues trailing across that looked like a marble pattern. The ceiling reached waaaay above their heads, like, 20-no, 50!-feet, and spiraling twists of metal dangled and spun from said ceiling, casting some bright reflections across the entire room. There were two levels of tables. The first, that they were standing in, was the lower level, a circular area with twelve round tables that sported four chairs at each. This area was rimmed with a small set of stairs to the second level of the floor, where in one section was the food line, and in the other was a long rectangular table that looked like it was meant for the professors.

Yang let out a long whistle of appreciation. Blake's mouth was slightly open in surprise as she took in the sights. Weiss didn't seem all that impressed with the sights, though Ruby thought she looked at least a little satisfied or happy because the corner of her glossy lips seemed to be pulled up in tiny smile.

"Well, Cap," Yang said, giving her a shake. "Let's get you fueled up!"

"Woohoo, food!" Ruby skipped to the food line, her team behind her. When she saw what was being served, her excitement doubled! She didn't even think that could be possible, but it was!

Pizza! Cookies! Macaroni and cheese! Cookies! Fish sticks! COOKIES!

Ruby loaded up one plate with pepperoni pizza and some mac and cheese, and then piled a mountain of cookies on another. Snickerdoodles the most, of course, but also lots of chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies and a couple white chocolate cookies and of course some double choc-

"Ruby!" Weiss griped. "All that food probably weighs more than you do! How on Remnant are you going to finish all that?"

Ruby laughed at that. "Annihilating cookies is my secret second semblance! Just ask Yang!"

When Weiss turned to look at Yang, disbelief written all over her face, Yang just nodded solemnly. "All of that food is going to disappear into the lil' pipsqueak."

Weiss shook her head as she grabbed a single slice of veggie pizza. "That sounds incredibly unhealthy."

"I think you mean awesome!" Ruby countered.

Weiss snorted. "I most certainly did not."

Ruby pouted, but then shrugged it off because who cares?! She has cookies! She grabbed a fork and skipped down to the eating area to claim a table for her team.

She got to munching on her appetizer cookie and sipping the chocolate milk she'd grabbed as her teammates joined her. Weiss had water and just that single slice of veggie pizza-that she was eating with a fork and a knife for some reason. Blake had iced tea and a pile of fish sticks almost as big as Ruby's pile of cookies, and was chewing contentedly on them while she people watched. Yang had orange soda and pretty much every slice of meat supreme pizza and was eating them like tacos.

"Hey, Weiss?" Ruby decided to start the meal conversation-what meal with friends wasn't complete with lots of talking?

"Yes, Ruby?"

"What's hard-light Dust?" Ruby hadn't actually known what Velvet was talking about, and from how curious Weiss was and the fact that she's apparently, like, the Princess of Dust, Ruby figured she'd know.

"Oh!" Weiss set her fork and knife down-seriously though, why?-and turned to Ruby with a smile. "So, you know how Grimm pools can only be destroyed with white Dust, right?"

Ruby nodded. The pools that spawned the Grimm had weird properties. They didn't seem to have a bottom, no matter how shallow they seemed. They couldn't be blown up because then the dark, goopy stuff would just go everywhere and create new pools. The only way humanity had found to deal with them is to drop white Dust crystals into them, which made them go poof!

Or something. Ruby had never actually seen it happen.

"Well," Weiss continued, "a couple years ago the Schnee Research Division developed a more efficient way of creating white Dust, and the process created a weird byproduct. After some experimenting, they figured out they could refine that byproduct into hard-light Dust. It's not actually "dust", it's a weird liquid thing that comes in batteries, basically. I haven't figured out a way to incorporate it into my fighting style. It's pretty strange. It has to be… programmed, kind of."

"Wow. That's so cool that you know all that!"

Weiss smiled shyly. "Thank you. It was kind of unavoidable, but I'm glad I learned about it. Once we figure out how to use it, I think it could do a whole lot of stuff."

Ruby nodded at that. A new Dust! The stuff they could do with all the other Dust was already awesome. Imagine a new one! The last big Dust discovery was white Dust almost ten years ago, and all they'd figured out how to do with it is blow up Grimm pools and make glorified flashlights. Hopefully, hard-light Dust wasn't a repeat of that…

"What kind of explosions does it make?" That seemed like the most obvious question.

Weiss frowned in confusion. "Explosions?"

"Yeah! Like when you shoot a hard-light Dust round, what kind of explosion does it make?"

Understanding flashed across Weiss' face. "Ah," she said with a small grin before putting her thoughtful face on again. "You know… I'm not sure. I don't know that it explodes at all."

"But then what do you use it for?" Yang asked.

"Well, like I said, it's different from normal Dust."

"Right. It's a liquid," Blake chimed in.

Look at that! Ruby's whole team was talking together without fighting! Miracles were real.

Weiss nodded, taking a dainty little sip of water before elaborating. "It's properties are also wildly different from normal. The presentations that the private researchers and military contractors gave were mostly variations on shield technologies."

"Shields?" Yang asked with a frown. Ruby understood how she felt. If it couldn't be used to blow up the evil Grimm, what was the point?

"Indeed. Like hard-light barriers that were basically force fields. There were some personal shields that were facsimiles of Aura protection that they were trying to put on mechs, but they were struggling to figure out how to make the generators small enough. There were also some prototypes of projection weapons. A scientist showed us a big club made of light that he smushed a watermelon with."

That made Ruby laugh so hard she almost choked on her chocolate milk. She could just imagine a bunch of old dudes in lab coats standing around whacking watermelons and then taking notes on clipboards.

Blake smiled from ear to ear, which Ruby was pretty sure was the Quiet Person version of laughing really hard.

Yang was laughing too, though Ruby had the feeling she was laughing more at Ruby that what Weiss had said.

Weiss seemed rather proud of herself. Ruby guessed she probably didn't get to make people laugh very often, and she knew it was a pretty good feeling.

She made sure to finish swallowing her drink and making sure she could breath, but then she hiccuped! Darn hiccups! The sound set Yang into hysterics. She was so loud Ruby noticed the other teams eyeing them with raised eyebrows.

"Yang! Shut up! *hic!*" Well that didn't help.

Yang clamped her hands around her mouth and tried to get a hold of herself.

After few seconds of suppressed giggles and wiping away tears of laughter, Yang waved her hand at them and said, "I'm alright, I'm alright."

Ruby rolled her eyes at her ridiculous sister, then turned back to her partner.

"Hey, Weiss?"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her in amusement. "Yes, Ruby?"

Ruby cleared her throat. "What does facsimile mean? *hic!*"

Weiss bit down on the inside of her lips to stop herself from laughing, but the corners of her lips gave it away.

"It means a copy or duplicate," she explained.

"Oh. *hic!*" Why didn't she just say 'copy' then? Fancy pants Weiss and her twenty letter words!

"Anyway, I'll see about getting some hard-light Dust sent to us," Weiss mused. "Maybe we can figure out some cool stuff with it."

Ruby clapped her hands, letting the cookie she was currently working on hang out of her mouth. Experimenting! That could be so much fun! Ruby had brought the tools she'd used to tweak Crescent Rose with her, too. Maybe they'd help. They weren't much, but they were something. And Weiss probably knew, like, everything about Dust, so they could probably create some really cool things.

"Mrph mph mr-rurf mrrfrr-rr," she said through her cookie.

Weiss raised her eyebrows and blinked at Ruby.

Blake leaned forward and fake-whispered, "You may need to repeat that one, Ruby."

"Why?" Yang cut in. "She clearly said, 'Who needs Dust when Yang can punch things?'"

Blake took another bite of fish stick. "Weird, I feel like that sounds like something you would say, Yang."

Yang nodded seriously. "You know what they say" great minds think alike!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and glanced over at Ruby. "What did you say, Ruby?"

Ruby held up a finger. Chew, chew, chew, swallow.

"I said," she shot a glare at Yang, "that we can make cool upgrades! What if we could give Crescent Rose a force field or something!"

"But… why, though?" Yang asked before shoving a massive amount of meat pizza in her mouth.

Ruby threw her hands up in the air. "Look, I don't know what we can do with it, okay?! Isn't that why we're in school?! To learn?!"

"Alright, calm down there, Pipsqueak," teased Blake, her eyes narrowed playfully as she hid the rest of her face behind her cup of tea.

"I'm warning you," Ruby growled, pointing a cookie at her teammate, "I bite."

"I believe you," Blake replied simply.

After a few more minutes of banter and eating-Yang somehow finished her twenty pizza slices before Weiss finished her one-Ruby decided it was time to get back to it. She hopped up and pointed to the door. "Alright, Team RWBY! Recommence Operation Find Our Room!"

Yang stood and stretched with an exaggerated yawn, and Ruby noticed that a lot of the boys and even some of the girls in the room gave her a lookover. "That's a terrible name for the mission," she muttered as they headed outside.

"Well, you do better!" Ruby challenged her sister.

Yang rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Operation Dorm Strike? Operation Bed Time? Operation Homebound?"

Durn. Those were better.

"Those suck!"

Yang tousled her hair as she squirmed to get away. "You just stuck the thing we're doing after the word 'Operation'," Yang argued. "That's, like, not even a mission name!"

"Yuh-huh it is! And with my name you know exactly what the mission is! Yours are just silly."

"I think Dorm Strike has a nice ring to it," Blake the Traitor interjected.

Ruby spun on her. "Blake, as Team Leader I order you to side with me!"

"No."

"Wow, you suck."

Blake chuckled at that. She pointed at one of the nearby buildings, and Ruby started heading that way.

She turned to Weiss. "Hey, partner, back me up here."

Weiss instead inspected her fingernails and said, "I refuse to have an opinion on this. On principle."

Ruby groaned loudly. "Gosh, you all suck."

Yang punched her lightly on the shoulder. "It's okay, Rubes. You just need to accept that I am superior at the skill of coming up with cool names! You still have other skills. Like, now we all know if we ever need a really, really dumb name, we'll come to you!"

Ruby glared at her sister, who gave a goofy grin and stuck her tongue out in response.

"Yang, you're grounded."

Yang laughed. "I don't think that's how the whole Team Leader thing works, Pipsqueak."

Ruby shook her head. "No no, I mean I'm messaging Dad and telling him you're being mean, and then he's gonna ground you."

She'd do it, too! Just watch! Dad would probably just laugh at her and make fun of her too, but Yang can just try to call her bluff!

"Pfft," Yang said with a dismissive wave. "Dad's on the other side of Vale right now. No way he can ground me."

Welp. Her bluff had been called.

"Well, back to the unnamed mission at hand, what room number are we again?"

Yang pulled out her scroll. "It's on your scrollkey if you uploaded the program chip they gave us."

"I did!" Ruby realized. She pulled out her scroll and found the little silver key icon that the chip had uploaded. A big 'RM 204' filled her screen.

"So, second floor?" she asked, wanting to make sure she knew where she was going.

Blake nodded. "Most likely."

They got to the entrance, two big, tinted glass doors standing between them and what looked like a wide open, marble-tiled foyer. It looked so pretty!

Ruby pushed at the door as she walked up, but it didn't budge, and she ended up smacking her face into the glass.

"Ow! What?..." Her cheeks flushed red as she looked down and saw that the door handles had "PULL" written on them vertically.

"Heh, heheh… Good one, door!" she said, trying to play off her blunder. "Almost got me there!"

She yanked at the handle and held the door open for her team, her heart jumping into overdrive at the excitement of seeing where she was going to be living for the next year. And man, was it awesome!

Giant marble tiles like in the cafeteria, but instead here the lines in the pattern were black and gold. There was a square of long, burgundy couches in the center of the room that surrounded a short glass table decorated with a silver statue that was a model of Beacon Tower. A rug with a curving pattern of reds and oranges and black sat under this centerpiece. Off on the left, a small set of stairs led up to a circular platform where a giant, beautiful darkwood grand piano stood proudly. At the far side of this grand lobby, a double set of stairs spiralled up to a curved landing on the second floor. A massive, crystalline chandelier hung from the ceiling, ornamented by carved shards of white Dust.

"Wow," breathed Ruby, at a loss for any better, more eloquent words.

She looked over to her teammates to see how they were reacting to the view. Yang was just standing there with her mouth gaping open. Blake's eyes were darting back and forth, taking in everything with wide eyes. Ruby swore she saw the girl's bow move once… Weird.

Weiss had her hands clasped to her chest and was staring at the piano with wide eyes and a small smile.

Ruby was about to ask Weiss if she played when a shiny service mech marched up to them with a whir.

"Welcome, students," it projected with its funny robot voice. "I am Bob, your dorm custodian."

Ruby and Yang both snickered at that.

"Beep boop, hello Bob. I am Ruby," she replied, moving her arms around like a robot.

The mech paused and looked at her, its faceplate emitting a soft blue circle as it scanned her. "Ruby Rose, Leader of Team RWBY," it confirmed.

Oh sweet, it knew them! No need for awkward introductions with a robot, then.

"Students, your belongings have been brought to your rooms. Should you have any questions or need any assistance, please feel free to ask. We hope you enjoy your stay." Bob turned and walked back to the counter tucked in the corner to the right where Ruby guessed his station was.

"Beep boop," Ruby said.

Yang smirked. "We have a robot butler named Bob, Ruby!"

"You think he'd make me cookies?" Ruby asked excitedly. If a robot could bake her cookies with super robot efficiency, maybe even she wouldn't be able to eat them fast enough to keep up!

Maybe…

"Perhaps a question to ask him another time?" Blake suggested. "I'd like to actually get to our room at some point."

"Yes, please," Weiss grumbled, heading toward the spiral staircase.

Ruby skipped ahead, unable to contain her excitement. Their room! She was going to get to spend a whole year in a room with super awesome huntresses! And one of them was Best Sister! (Yeah, get out of here, Weiss' sister!) And with three teammates in the same room, Ruby was pretty much guaranteed to always have a friend around to hang out with! This was so awesoooooooooome!

She slipped into her semblance and flew up to the landing on the next floor, lacking the patience to take the stairs. Reaching the top, she turned around to tell her teammates to hurry up. The trail of rose petals she'd left through the air floated lazily down onto them, and added a nice splash of color to the lobby.

"Ugh, Ruby!" Weiss whined. "Could you not throw flowers everywhere in this amazing, clean living space?"

Ruby waved a hand. "Don't worry about it! They'll disappear in a couple hours. Now c'mooon, hurry up!"

She turned and skipped down the hallway that the landing led into. In the middle of the hallway on either side were doors that sported plaques reading "RM 201" and "RM 202". That meant their room would be next!

The hallway opened into a large, rectangular room that Ruby immediately fell in love with. There was a large kitchen in one corner, featuring shiny granite countertops, a fridge, a stovetop with four gas burners, an oven, and an island that held a small hibachi grill on one end. The outer countertop had four tall bar stools situated in front of it, and there was a large circular table with eight seats in the open area next to the kitchen. On the other side of the room, the floor was carpeted, and a long couch and a couple fluffy chairs provided seating for six in front of a big television. It was a living room!

On the other side of the room, the hallway continued on. Ruby guessed it would lead to the other two rooms for the freshman class teams. To their room! Team RWBY's!

Ruby dashed over to the entrance of the next hall, but then she stopped. Maybe seeing their room should be something they do together as a team? Yeah, that made sense.

But uggggggh, that meant waiting. And her teammates were so slooooow! Look, they just reached the landing, and they were walking! WALKING!

For not the first time, Ruby thought about writing to the Vale Council to try to get walking outlawed. At least when there was exciting stuff to get to!

She waved at her team to hurry up, to which Weiss rolled her eyes, Blake smiled and held up a hand in a "be patient" gesture (not like Ruby wasn't already being incredibly patient), and Yang grinned and broke into a quick skip to reach Ruby. When they crossed into the living area, their eyes all went wide.

"Wow, this is awesome!" Yang exclaimed, looking over the kitchen.

Ruby bounced. "Yeah! Now we can keep having your Super Saturday Sister Special Breakfast!"

Yang smiled and tousled Ruby's hair. "Durn straight!" She glanced down the hallway and saw the two doors that mirrored the other two rooms they'd passed. "You excited?" she asked Ruby, to which Ruby nodded super fast.

Blake walked up, a bright smile on her face. "Shall we?" she asked, gesturing ahead.

Ruby looked to Weiss, making sure she was ready, who was standing with her fingers weaved together in front of herself like a princess, head lowered, an inexplicable look of anxiety on her face.

"Weiss?"

Pretty blue eyes filled with worry looked up to meet hers.

"You okay?" Ruby asked.

Weiss looked down again. "Yes," she said slowly. "This all just feels very… public." She waved at the living room.

"Well yeah!" Ruby said. "We'll have each other and tons of friends to hang out with all the time!"

For some reason, that seemed to make things worse, Weiss' pencil thin eyebrows creasing in a frown. But she seemed to force a tight smile and nodded at Ruby.

"You're right. Let's see our room."

Excitement crashing back to Ruby, she gave a whoop and dashed to the rooms ahead. "RM 204" was stenciled into the door on the left. Their room!

"Lead us through the breach, Cap," Yang said as she walked up, placing a hand on Ruby's shoulder.

Ruby pulled her scroll out and waved it in front of the keypad on the door. There was a click and a small light on the lock flashed green. This was it!

She pushed open the door.

"Woohoo!" she shouted.

Bunk beds!

Weiss groaned at her side. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."


	3. Seeding 1-3

This was terrible.

Bunk beds crammed into a living space smaller than Weiss' bathroom back home? A complete lack of any secluded rooms to study or be alone? Not one, but two open community spaces where people would be coming and going constantly?

How was Weiss supposed to get any _privacy_?

The Schnee estate, a complex that sprawled across half again as much land as Beacon Academy, had only ever housed a maximum of _six _people. Only two of them were people that Weiss actually enjoyed being around, and Winter had left home five years ago and Klein always had to serve her parents and brat of a little brother. As a result, Weiss had spent most of her time alone, and she had gotten used to that.

But this… Forced to live stuffed against the two loudest, most hot headed _children_ she'd ever met? This was a hell crafted personally for Weiss, and she wasn't sure what she'd done to warrant such a punishment.

The only silver lining to this-a phrase that made Weiss cringe to think about because it brought Ruby's eyes to mind-was the piano in the foyer. There had been only two things Weiss had been sad to leave behind when she came to Vale: Klein, and the family's grand piano. She'd brought her violin with her, but the piano had always been her favorite. At least she'd still have access to that here, even if it _was _in a wide open space where people would constantly be around.

She preemptively shuddered at the thought of Ruby coming up and trying to start a _conversation_ while she was in the middle of a piece.

_Ugh._

She walked into the room slowly, doing a slow spin to inspect her new prison cell as Ruby flitted from one thing to the next hyperactively.

Atrociously small beds-Weiss believed they were referred to as "twin size," for some reason, even though the bigger bed sizes were named after monarchs.

Two wide desks against the wall with the entrance door, each with two chair tucked into them. Was she supposed to _share _a desk?

A short bookshelf ran underneath the sill of the single large window in the center of the far wall. Weiss suspected it wouldn't be big enough for all of Blake's books.

Doors next to either of the bunk beds led to other rooms that, upon inspection, revealed themselves to be insanely small bathrooms, both with minute walk-in closets attached. Weiss breathed a sigh of relief at the realization that she'd be sharing a bathroom with only one person instead of three. It was still a violation of human rights, but at least it wasn't the end of the world.

When she walked back into the bedroom she was greeted by a smiling Ruby bouncing up to her. "Hey, Weiss?"

Was this a thing now? "Yes, Ruby?" she responded.

"Top or bottom?"

_Uh_… "Excuse me?"

Ruby frowned in confusion and pointed at the bunk bed next to them. "Which bunk do you want, silly?"

"Oh." _No. No no no. Not her. Nonononono. _"You don't want to bunk with your sister?" she asked hopefully, her stomach twisting into a knot that was tighter than the one on the sash around her waist. _Blake wouldn't be such a bad bunkmate. She's quiet and likes books! That's good, right?_

"Nope!" beamed Ruby, apparently missing Weiss' clear desire to not have to sleep anywhere near her. "Yang thought it would be a good idea for us to bunk with are partners, and we agreed!"

Weiss leaned to the side to peak around the girl in front of her. Sure enough, the other two girls had settled into the bed on the other side of the room, Blake relaxing sprawled out like a cat on the bottom bunk while Yang was sitting on the top bunk pinning up a gaudy poster of that one boy band that had become popular from that one-hit-wonder a year ago.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Weiss straightened back up and took a deep breath. _Count to five. _

_One._

This uncouth girl was going to be her bunkmate? Weiss couldn't imagine a worse development.

_Two_.

She wasn't sure what exactly she'd expected when she'd left home for a boarding school, but it wasn't this. What _had _she expected?

_Three._

She supposed she hadn't given it much thought. She hadn't imagined how different her life would be from her solitary existence in the Schnee manor. It was foolish of her to expect anything to be familiar.

_Four._

It wouldn't be so bad, would it? If she was bunking with Ruby that meant she wouldn't have to see her and her antics across the room.

_Fi-_

"Weiss?"

Weiss sighed and opened her eyes to find Ruby looking up at her anxiously. The girl glanced back at their other two teammates, then returned her attention to Weiss. "If… if I'm going to be a problem, I can see if they'd be willing to switch…" Her voice trailed away, the sadness in her eyes telling Weiss more than any words could just how much she was hurting this girl with her attitude.

_Damn it, Weiss. _

Winter had told her to give her team, her new family, a chance, and yet here she was making this girl miserable when she hadn't done anything wrong beyond being a bit overzealous in a fight and excited to see her new school.

Weiss needed to do better. She'd agreed to staying with the team for lunch, and that had been an enjoyable experience overall, right?

She shook her head. "No, no you don't need to do that," she told Ruby softly. "I'm… I'm sorry. May I have the bottom bunk? The thought of sleeping in the air freaks me out." Maybe that concession would help Ruby feel better after Weiss' rudeness.

That apparently did the trick. Ruby's ear-to-ear smile came back and her eyes lit up. "Sure thing! Do you need help getting your stuff set up? I don't have much so I'll be done quick."

Weiss cringed at the thought of that. Unpacking was something she wanted to do herself. Organizing her belongings was something calming she was actually looking forward to.

"I'll… let you know?" she hedged.

Ruby flashed her a big smile. "You got it, partner!" she chirped for bouncing over to her single suitcase and beginning to unpack.

It looked like Yang had a single large suitcase like her sister, and an additional large carry on bag that seemed to be filled entirely with hair care supplies. Blake had an extra suitcase, but it looked like it was mostly just used as a mobile library that she was now unloading into the small bookshelf.

Weiss glanced at her stack of seven massive, stainless steel suitcases. She'd thought she'd packed incredibly light, but now her stuff seemed… excessive compared to her teammates.

With a wad of clothes tangled up in her arms, Ruby dashed past Weiss to get to the closet with a rush of fragrant air and petals. Almost as soon as she was gone, she was back, unpacking and stacking what looked like comic books.

_There's no way she put those clothes away _that _fast, right?_

Stalking back over to the closet, Weiss threw the door open in a huff. Sure enough, Ruby had just crammed her clothes into a couple of the cubbyholes meant for shoes and accessories.

"Ruby!"

Cool air and the scent of roses rolled into her gently from behind. "That's me!"

Weiss turned to her teammate with a stomp of her heeled foot and pointed imperiously at the mess Ruby had left in _their_ closet. "Do you find this acceptable?" If she was going to spend _four years_ living with this dolt, Weiss needed to get her into shape as a livable roommate pronto.

Ruby looked at her crime, then at Weiss. Then again. And again. "Uh… Do you want them on, like, hangers or something?"

"Yes, Ruby!" She pointed at the hanger racks. "Day clothes go there." She pointed at one of the two drawers on either side of the closet. "Pajamas and undergarments go there." She pointed at the cubby holes currently stuffed with Ruby's clothes. "_Those_ are for shoes and jewelry stands."

Ruby snickered behind her hand.

"_What_ is so funny?" Weiss demanded.

Ruby looked up at her with a giggle. "You said 'undergarment.'"

Weiss sighed. _Child._

"Just put your clothes away correctly… Please?" She remembered to add that last part after a moment.

Ruby shuffled her feet and turned her eyes down to them. "I… uh… I didn't pack any hangers."

Weiss closed her eyes. _Figures_.

"I'm sorry!" Ruby whined. "I didn't think about it. I'll go see if Yang brou-"

"No," Weiss cut her off with a wave of her hand. "I have extras. I'll go get them for you."

Ruby's eyes went wide. "Really? Wow, thanks Weiss!"

Weiss gave her a small smile and headed back to her stuff. She flipped through the different tags on her suitcases and found the one that said "4 - Clothing Accessories" in her neat, flowing handwriting.

"Man, you have a lot of stuff!" Ruby intelligently observed from her side. "Did you label all of these? You have really neat handwriting! It looks like cursive, but I can actually read it!"

Weiss smirked at that. "My reading and writing tutor always told me that cursive was the idiot's cheat for looking sophisticated."

"Hey!" Yang grouched from her and Blake's bathroom, where she was setting up her hair salon. "I write in cursive!"

_Oops._

"No you don't!" Ruby countered, confusion pulling on her brow.

Yang sighed heavily, and Weiss was mildly impressed that she'd made it audible from that far away. "Ruby, you're supposed to go _with_ the joke," she explained slowly.

"Oh. Sorry."

Weiss internally groaned. She had meant for her remark to be heard by Ruby and Ruby alone. It wasn't really all that bad that Yang and, presumably, Blake had heard, but it was yet another reminder of how little privacy or borders she'd have living here.

Bringing the conversation back around, Weiss tried to give Ruby a little lesson in being organized. "But yes, I did label all of these. It'll make unpacking far easier."

"Heh." Ruby scratched the back of her head. "Yeah, that sounds like it was a lot of fun…"

_Is having fun all this girl thinks about?_

Weiss unzipped the suitcase and pulled out one of the two packs of extra hangers she'd brought with her for when she inevitably went shopping in Vale and brought back more clothes. "Here," she said, handing Ruby the pack of hangers. "Let me know if you need more."

Ruby took the hangers with a silly little hop and a smile. "Thank you! I won't. I don't have much stuff."

That was true. From what Weiss had seen, Ruby couldn't have more than seven or eight sets of clothes. That seemed incredibly… sad? But that meant that Weiss would have plenty of space for all of her stuff.

Silver linings.

Weiss wanted to start with unpacking her clothes, but decided to on unpacking her school supplies-case 6-first to give Ruby time in the closet. She pulled out the binders, notebooks, reams of loose-leaf paper, pencil cases, and all the other supplies she'd brought and arranged them in neat piles on the carpet.

The cases with her writing and measuring utensils would go on the desk, probably tucked into the corner. The notebooks and binders could go on the small shelf overhang on the desk, along with the desklamp she'd wrapped with her clothes in another suitcase.

What about her Dust equipment? She'd brought a large amount of pre-packed cartridges for Myrtenaster, plus the personal loading and refining equipment that she'd learned to use over the past three years. It was expensive, delicate machinery and glassware… and should probably be kept away from these chuckleheads.

Weiss resigned to worry about that last.

She placed her little model of a kneeling knight on the desk and placed her fountain pen in his outstretched arms. A smile crept up on her when she looked at him. He was a replica of the knight she'd painted when she was little, a birthday gift from her sister.

Next, her normal pens and pencils in their case were placed on one side of the knight, and her case of colored pencils on the other. She lined up her empty binders and notebooks on the shelf, and suffered through the struggle of setting them up to not fall to the side immediately.

"Awwww, he's so cute!" Ruby squealed just behind her shoulder. Weiss turned to see her partner looking at her knight, her hands to her cheeks like she was containing a cuteness overload.

Weiss smiled. "Thank you. He was a gift."

"What's his name?" Ruby bounced as she asked.

Weiss frowned. "Name?"

"Well, _yeah_," Ruby said, looking at Weiss like she had grown a second head. "What do you call him?"

"I… I don't call him anything, Ruby. I don't talk to him. He's just a statue." Grimm, she really was a child.

Ruby leaned down and pretended to plug the knight's ears. "Don't listen to her, Sir Writes-a-Lot. She knows not of what she speaks."

"Did you finish in the closet?" Weiss asked to get past this derangity.

"Yup! All set, everything in the right place. I think."

"You _think_?"

"Look, I don't know!" Ruby waved her hands around. "I've never had a closet that was, like, it's own room before, okay?"

Weiss frowned at that. "You don't have a walk-in closet at home?"

Ruby scratched the back of her head. "Is that what they're called? Heh. That's weird. Technically, you can walk into a normal closet, too, right?"

"But no, Ice Queen," Yang spat as she came out of her bathroom. "We don't have obnoxiously large super-closets back home. We're not all heiresses, you know."

Weiss recoiled at that. "That's not what-I wasn't…" She just hadn't realized people didn't all have walk-in closets in their home. She hadn't expected them to have anything like what Weiss had, but to not have a walk-in at all? That seemed so… strange.

"Hey, don't mind her." Ruby reached out to give Weiss' arm a reassuring pat, but Weiss cringed away from the contact, and Ruby noticed. "Oh, sorry," she whispered. She pulled her hand back and clasped both behind her back nervously. "You're good to unpack your clothes! You've got almost the entire closet of space. And let me know if I did something wrong with my stuff and I'll come fix it." She gave Weiss a friendly smile that Weiss tried her best to return.

With a grunt, Weiss dragged case one onto its wheels and brought it over to the closet. It looked like Ruby had, for the most part, done a decent job of fixing the mess she'd made. Her shirts were hung up, though they weren't all facing left like they should have. She'd also folded her pants and placed them on top of the dresser for some reason, instead of hooking them on hangers of their own.

Sighing, Weiss went over to fix the issues herself. It would take too long and be too taxing on her sanity to explain to Ruby what was wrong and have her fix it. Weiss flipped the shirts that needed flipping, hung up the two pairs of dark jeans and placed the sweatpants into the drawer with the pajama shirts that she had to refold. She turned the single pair of boots in the cubby hole so they faced outwards.

_There_. Sanity saved.

She set to unpacking her own clothes now. Case 1 was her combat outfits and most of her shirts and blouses. She'd packed them all with their hangers, so putting them up was a simple task. She organized by function, then color: dress clothes first, then casual outing clothes, then the comfortable "night in" clothes she had hardly ever worn at home because Father found them unbecoming of a Schnee. Most of her stuff was white or blue, with some greys, aquas, and violets thrown in. Pale colors like that tended to go best with her complexion, not to mention her hair and eyes.

The contents of case one took up slightly more than half the hanger rack on Weiss' side. She glanced back over at Ruby's hung up belongings that took up less than a fifth of the other rack. Well, at least Weiss would have extra space for her stuff.

One case of clothes down. Three more to go.

She brought the empty suitcase back out to the room and grabbed Case 2.

"Need any help with that?" Ruby asked from her bunk where she was pinning up what looked like video game posters.

Weiss shook her head. "I got it." She was in the zone. Organizing and cleaning put her in a relaxing zen state she sorely needed right now.

The rest of the suitcases went more slowly. There were pajamas and undergarments that had gotten jostled during the trip and needed to be refolded. She set up her jewelry boxes on her dresser, arranged her shoes in the cubbies, hung up her pants, skirts, and belts, hung up her full-size elliptical mirror, and set up her toiletries at the sink and shower (which was also a bathtub, for some reason).

The whole endeavor took about an hour and a half-an hour and a half of being left alone in relaxing bliss. Her stuff ended up all fitting, though she did need to end up using about half of the hanger rack on Ruby's side of the closet. There was still space left for more clothes, though, so that was good. She was occasionally distracted by shouts and laughter from the two sisters across the thin wall. Towards the end, Weiss started slowing down, dreading the mandatory social interaction she'd have to endure once she went back out to the room.

Eventually, she steeled herself, taking a long moment to try to hold on to this calm she felt before venturing over to her team. She lingered in the doorway a moment to see that Blake was lying on her side on her bed reading a book, Yang was browsing on her scroll, and Ruby was… nowhere to be seen.

Blake noticed Weiss and flashed her a small smile before turning back to her book.

_Perfect._

Gingerly, she pulled out her violin case. She undid the latches, opening for no other reason than to stare lovingly at the instrument. Music always helped her relax. She took a deep breath, inhaling the comforting smell of the wood and resin, then closed the case and set it next to the bookshelf.

Weiss finished setting up her school supplies, then popped open her last suitcase, the mini portable Dust refinery. She briefly inspected all the machines to make sure they were undamaged: Distiller? Check. Compactor? Check. Separator? Check. The empty vials were also in good condition. Excellent.

She took the small case of preloaded Dust vials for Myrtenaster and set it on the bookshelf, then closed the main case with all of the gear still in it and slid it under her bed. The desk might be big enough to serve as a workspace, but she'd need to put everything away each time or she wouldn't have room for her regular homework stuff. That wasn't too bad. If she had to put the equipment away after each use, she'd also have to clean it after each use, which was a good practice to have.

Finally, Weiss let herself collapse onto her new bed.

'_Oh no. This won't do at all. _

Was this a _spring_ mattress? She'd had such a long day, after the forest trial, having her hopes and dreams destroyed in front of an auditorium full of strangers, the emotionally ravaging conversation with her sister, extended exposure to the sanity hazard that was her team leader, and unpacking… And her source of rest and comfort after all of that was a bed made out of bricks. She'd need to go into town and at least get a foam mattress cover or something, because she sure wouldn't be able to deal with this for a year.

She pulled out her scroll and typed out a reminder for tomorrow.

12:00 - Shop for cover for brickbed. And more pillows. And a softer comforter.

With a heavy sigh, Weiss put her hands behind her head and fell back, trying to stretch out and _will_ the tension in her muscles away.

Classes started the day after tomorrow, and then Weiss would have the challenge of being the best huntress ever to throw herself against. Everything else, the annoyance of her teammates and the discomfort of this less-than-optimal lifestyle, would hopefully fall away for her when she could focus all of her being on excelling.

Closing her eyes, she emptied her mind as she counted her breaths, and the occasional sound of Blake turning a page. She definitely felt like she'd earned some piano time today. She treated the piano as something of a personal reward that she'd only allow herself to indulge in if she felt she'd done well that day, and she considered the fact that she'd made it through the disaster that had been the last twelve hours without screaming incoherently at a wall a major personal victory.

Not that she'd ever do that. Such behaviour would be unbecoming of a lady.

"Guys! Guys! Guys!" came a squeaky voice from the hallway, getting progressively louder. A second later Ruby zoomed into the room, rose petals and fragrance wafting in with her entrance. "Guys!"

Weiss sighed. Moment of quiet peace, gone.

"What is it, Rubes?" Yang asked, swinging her feet over her bed.

"There's a _game room_!" Ruby said with a squeal, jumping up and down.

Yang hopped down from her bed. "Yo, for real?"

Ruby practically pinballed around the room. "Yeah, it's downstairs in a room off the lobby! There's foosball and ping pong and air hockey and Team JNPR is already there and I wanna go let's go let's go let's-" she paused to take a breath-"go!"

"Heck yes! Blake, you coming?" Yang asked her partner.

Blake sighed and rolled out of bed. "As long as I can bring my book."

Yang frowned. "I mean, I'm not sure that counts as a ping pong paddle, but sure! Whatever, let's go! I'm gonna mop the floor with you guys!" She skipped out of the room, voluminous golden hair bobbing up and down. Blake followed quietly after her while Ruby turned to Weiss for that inevitable, dreadful question.

"You coming, Weiss?"

Seven rambunctious teens in a room playing arcade games while practically sweating adrenaline and decibels? _Ugh_. "No, thank you."

Ruby looked visibly distraught by that response. "But Weiss, it'll be fun. I promise. Come hang out with your team," she pleaded.

It didn't at all seem like something that Weiss would find fun, that was something Ruby wouldn't understand. "I'm sure it would be," she said instead. "But I'm very tired and stressed and I'd just like to… have some me time."

The words were honest, and Ruby seemed able to sense at least that. She nodded sadly and turned to leave. "Well, if you change your mind, it's the door between the staircases downstairs."

"Okay. Thank you, Ruby." She wouldn't be changing her mind, but it couldn't hurt to show some appreciation for the invitation. It wasn't the kind of thing she was usually wanted at. Ever, actually.

A part of Weiss' heart twisted in disappointment in herself. Maybe she _should_ go spend time with her team. She may be getting wanted now, but if she kept isolating herself like this, how long would it take before Ruby just stopped bothering to invite her?

But… She was just so worn out. She just wanted to relax for a long while and then go play the piano. The overstimulation of playing games with so many people seemed so daunting and stressful.

No. She needed to take care of herself and her mental well-being. She needed to be alone for a little bit.

After a long pause that Weiss could guess was her partner trying to figure out how to convince her to come, Ruby relented, turning to go. Stopping in the doorway, she turned and spoke softly, "I hope you have fun. Or… whatever?"

Weiss smiled. "You too, Ruby."

The door closed with a quiet click, and Weiss was left alone with her thoughts.

Well, the past day had changed her life so much in ways that were so much worse than she'd hoped. The moment her eyes had settled on Ruby in the forest, she'd resigned herself to four years of disappointment. Though she supposed it could be worse: it could have been Yang. Ruby, though obnoxiously immature and alarmingly dense, was at least sweet and friendly, almost to a fault. Yang was… Well, Yang was treating Weiss the way she probably deserved to be treated, so she supposed she couldn't fault the girl for that, even if it was unpleasant. Four years of Yang's anger would be a toll. Blake seemed nice, and was quiet and thoughtful. Weiss would have preferred her over Ruby as a partner any day.

But the fact that Jaune "Vomit Boy" Arc had landed Pyrrha Nikos as his partner was so grating and undeserved and unfair… It made Weiss want to throw something.

Again, she would never do something so base, of course.

Another wave of self pity and frustration washed over Weiss. She'd spent the past five years-ever since Winter left home to join the Atlesian military-training, studying, practicing as hard as she could to earn her place at the most prestigious huntsman academy in Remnant, to make sure she was the caliber of huntress that would deserve the title of team leader, and Old Man Ozpin had just handed that incredible honor and responsibility to a child that has probably spent more time eating cookies than she has studying and training. A child that had no awareness of the world around her and had almost made Weiss set the forest on fire because of her cluelessness. A child that ran face first into a Death Stalker because she wanted to prove a point.

This girl was supposed to _lead_ Weiss?

She felt tears of frustration building up again, and groaned and buried her face in her pillow to keep them at bay.

Winter had been supportive. Of course she had. But it was reassuring that she'd still thought Weiss was doing well even though she hadn't been named team leader. She'd said Weiss needed to give her team a chance, that they'd be a family some day.

Weiss found it hard to believe that she could ever get along with Ruby or Yang, but Blake? Most likely.

And why had Winter been so reticent to talking about her own team, when she apparently had nothing but a positive outlook on the concept? Weiss would need to remember to ask her sister about that later.

The dorm building was nice. The architecture and furnishings were simple, classy, and beautiful. Weiss regretted that the piano was in such an open, public space, though. She hoped she'd be able to be left alone to play in the evenings. She'd need to figure out a time of day when there wouldn't be walking through the lobby. Probably really late at night or early in the morning?

The room was terrible. No space, no privacy, no comfort. An entire year of this seemed like such an insurmountable trial, Weiss was getting anxious just thinking about it. And possibly longer than a year, depending on how housing was handled for second-year students and beyond.

She could tough it out though, right? Of course she could. She was Weiss Schnee. She could do anything she set her mind too.

That was what she needed to become a huntress more than anything-confidence. Confidence in herself. In her abilities. She could do this.

… Because she wasn't sure what she'd do if she couldn't.

After laying there with her thoughts for a long time, Weiss eventually pulled herself out of bed to head downstairs. She cracked the door open and heard a bunch of shouting and loud voices coming from the community living area, and took a deep breath before quickly and quietly shuffling out of the room and down the hall.

It was Team CRDL, the four boys playing some video game together on the television. Weiss silently crept behind them, and they thankfully never noticed her.

Her heels clicked on the staircase as she made her way down to the lobby. It was empty in here, though she could barely make out voices coming from behind the door Ruby had told her about.

Turning the other way, she stepped up to the piano, running her hand along the warm wood before taking a seat. She lifted the fallboard and gently trailed her fingers over the keys.

This was nice.

Something felt a little off, though. She stood and walked over to the far corner where the mech butler was apparently in sleep mode. She cleared her throat. "Um.. Excuse me… Bob?" It was hard to say that with a straight face.

The mech's faceplate glowed orange as it cycled awake. "Miss Schnee," it observed in its tiny voice. "How may I assist you?"

"Would it be possible to turn off the lights in here?" She wanted to feel a little more at home, and the lighting in the Schnee manor had always been dim.

"Certainly, Miss." As he said that, the lights seemed to flick off of their own accord. "Anything else I can help you with?"

"No, that will be all," Weiss said, already walking back to the piano. Now it was illuminated only by the moonlight flooding in through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows and the soft glow of the white Dust fixtures in the chandelier.

_Perfect. _

Weiss began to play. She hadn't needed sheet music for most of her songs in a long, long time, playing from memory with her eyes closed. She stumbled a few times-the keys on this piano were slightly heavier than the one back home. But it was wonderful to play.

She started with a simple march, the first real classical pieces she'd learned when she was little. She transitioned into a soft waltz that forced her thin fingers to fly across the keys, then went straight into a sonata, the last piece she'd learned that she had fully memorized.

After she was done with those, she dove into the last song she'd been learning, though she once again get stuck at the same part that had been giving her trouble to remember. For some reason, the chord progression for the harmony kept slipping from her mind once she got to it.

Instead of letting herself stew in frustration at her incompetence like she usually did, she forced herself to go back to more familiar songs, replaying the ones she'd just finished and a couple more she knew by heart.

Falling into the music, he last track of all sense of time. Her stress and worries melted away, and she slipped into that lovely twilight state of conscious but thoughtless, acting only on muscle memory, that had gotten her through so many stressful nights back home.

She was just about to move into one of her original songs, and took a breath to begin singing, when Ruby's grating voice cut through her bliss. "Wow, you're incredible, Weiss!"

Weiss' fingers immediately jerked off the keys. Slowly, she opened her eyes and glanced to the side to find both her team and Team JNPR all standing around staring at her, varying levels of surprise and approval on their faces. They were all arrayed by the stairs, but Ruby had walked up far closer and was standing wide-eyed at the foot of the platform. An anxious itch crept over Weiss to know she'd been listened to for who knows how long.

It wasn't that she was nervous playing in front of others. She wasn't. She'd done it plenty of times before at concerts. She had enough confidence in her skill that she wouldn't make a mistake and embarrass herself. But when she'd played in front of others, she'd been playing _for _others. She'd known they'd be listening. But this… When she played normally, in moments like this, she was playing for herself. She didn't like others listening to her music because it hadn't been _meant_ for them.

Weiss forced herself to breathe past the anxiety. A part of her was grateful for the compliment, and glad that her fellow students seemed so impressed with her skill. But another, larger part of her was just frustrated that her moment to herself was over.

"Did you _have_ to interrupt me?" she hissed in a voice so low it was barely above a whisper.

Ruby's face fell, her eyes shooting to the ground as she scratched the back of her head and rubbed one of her heels against her other ankle. "I-I… I'm sorry. I didn't-I just wanted to tell you that you sounded great, I didn't mean to-"

"Stop," Weiss cut her off, guilt punching her in the gut as she watched Ruby stammer in shame. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Thank you for the kind words." The apology and reconciliation sounded stiff in Weiss' own ears, but in her defense, she wasn't used to issuing either.

Ruby gave her a small smile in response, and it looked like some of the sadness Weiss had just wrought had faded from her eyes.

Weiss nodded toward the others, most of whom had started heading back to their rooms now. "Did you have fun?" she asked.

Immediately, Ruby's happy, bouncing persona came back in full force. "Totally! We played all the things! We tried playing three vee three ping pong, but that was kind of a disaster. It ended up just turning into Yang and Nora trying to see who could smack each other with the ball the hardest. And Ren! Freaking Ren is like the god of foosball! He moved his hands so fast, it was crazy! And Jaune was, well, he was Jaune. Pretty much everyone beat him up. Blake beat him in air hockey and she was playing with one hand while reading her book! Oh, and Nora…"

Weiss took a deep breath and lowered the fallboard and stood from the bench, falling in beside Ruby as they walked back to their room together, Ruby chattering the entire time.

This road wouldn't be easy, and it would probably feel excruciatingly long, but as long she could find the time to make it to her happy place like she had just now, she felt like she could do this.

Ruby fell silent when they reached the second floor, and after a moment Weiss realized that the girl was looking at her expectantly.

"Sorry, what?"

"Have you ever played foosball before?" Ruby asked cheerily.

Weiss chuckled. "No, I can't say that I have."

"Ermahgersh, we _have_ to play some time. It's _sooo_ much fun! So, it's like soccer on a table, right? And all the players are attached to sticks-wait, that probably doesn't make sense. Okay, let me start over! So the table is, like, a rectangle, right? I mean, duh. But there are holes in the side where the sticks go through…"

Weiss smiled to herself. At least she had a friendly partner.


	4. Seeding 1-4

Ruby dreamed of strawberries and cookies and weapons. Sometimes, they mixed! Weapons that shot cookies, strawberries with cookies for seeds, cookies made of strawberries… It occurred to Ruby's slumbering brain that strawberry cookies might be a thing.

She was enjoying a lovely moment where she was swinging a giant Crescent Rose around Beacon, chopping down buildings and watching them tumble like dominoes and break apart into thousands of cookies when they hit the ground when a noise intruded into her thoughts.

_Ding ding! Ding ding! Ding ding!_

"Hmmmmph?" she groaned as she rolled around, pulled from sleep by someone's alarm. She sensed movement somewhere around her, someone getting out of bed and heading into the bathroom. Was it already time to get up? She was still so sleepy, though.

She realized she didn't care if it was time to get up, and rolled back over into her comfy covers, hugging one of her pillows to herself and snuggling into her other one. Having two pillows was great! She drifted into the strange twilight state of being asleep but not really and time seemed to go both super fast and super slow which was really weird 'cause Ruby usually just went super fast 'cause going slow is for suckers…

A minute past. Or maybe it was an hour. It was hard to tell. Ruby saw a number of cookies during that time, though, however long it was. Eventually, she was stirred from sleep again by the sound of the room's lock clicking and the door opening quietly.

She turned and blinked sleepily to see a blurry white and blue figure entering the room and heading to the bathroom. "Mmmmweiss?" she mumbled.

The figure stopped and stepped back into view from behind Ruby's bed. "I'm sorry, Ruby," Weiss whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep."

What was Weiss doing up, though? It was like… some super early time, wasn't it? "Where'd you go?" she slurred as she rubbed sleep from her eyes.

"I just went for a run."

Clearing her vision, Ruby looked down at Weiss, who was wearing what looked like high-end workout clothes, a tight fitting white shirt with what might be… air holes?... running along the sides of the short sleeves and down the back, and blue short shorts, with simple white and grey running shoes. Her long hair was pulled back in her ponytail, and sweat was dripping down from her forehead slowly.

Somehow, she still looked like a princess.

Ruby pushed off her mattress, propping herself up on her elbows. She'd missed something! Someone was already up and doing stuff, and she wasn't there to join them! And it was running! She _loved_ running!

Weiss ducked into the bathroom while Ruby scrounged around in her blankets for her scroll. Where had she put it? She'd been playing Grimm Crush on it before she fell asleep… Aha! For some reason it got under her sheets next to her foot.

Crap. The battery was at two percent. '_Way to go, Ruby Rose.'_

Wait, it was seven thirty in the morning! Why the heck was Weiss awake? What kind of psychopath wakes up for exercise _this_ early? Was the sun even awake yet?

Reaching over to peek behind the curtain over the window, she found that the sky was just turning light shades of pink and orange. It looked really pretty! The buildings of Beacon Academy made really impressive silhouettes.

She stretched her hands over her head with a big yawn. She was awake now, might as well get out of bed and find some ways to have fun!

Weiss came back out of the bathroom, closing it quietly and glancing across the room to make sure she hadn't disturbed Blake and Yang. She'd changed into a fancy looking sleeveless white shirt with silver buttons down the front and a light purple skirt that looked kinda the same color as Yang's eyes. What had her sister called it? Lilac?

Ruby kicked her feet as Weiss tiptoed over to the bookshelf, causing the girl to glance up at her as she moved past.

"You can go back to sleep, Ruby."

Ruby shook her head with a smile. "Nope! I'm already up! Now we can hang out and do partner things!"

Weiss' hand stopped as she was reaching for her tiny guitar case and she looked down at the ground, causing her ponytail to swing over her shoulder like a giant pendul...pend… that thing on the big fancy clocks.

"Are you sure you don't want to get more sleep?" Weiss asked. "You were up pretty late last night."

Aw! Weiss was so sweet for worrying about her! "I'm okay! What do you want to do?"

Weiss picked up her tiny guitar case and hugged it to herself. "I was going to go play the violin-" oh, that's what that is! "-if I can find somewhere quiet that won't wake everyone up…"

Ruby hopped down from her bed and landed next to Weiss, which caused her partner to flinch slightly for some reason. Weird. Had she thought Ruby was attacking her? That's just silly!

"How about the roof?" Ruby offered. That seemed like a great spot to play, and it probably had a great view! Ruby wondered how tiny everyone would look from up there.

Weiss scrunched her eyebrows. "Can we go up there?"

Ruby tilted her head in thought. "Well, yeah! With my semblance or your glyphs we could get up there easy!"

"Easily."

"What?" Ruby thought maybe Weiss was agreeing with her, but her eyebrows were still scrunched together.

"We can get up there easily. You're describing how we're doing an action, so you have to use the adverb. Easily."

"Oh… Okay." Did she have to, though? She said 'easy' and the universe didn't smite her for it. Weren't all words made up anyway? Did it matter if what she said was proper if the point came across?

Weiss seemed to realize that Ruby wasn't convinced she should care, and cleared her throat. "Sorry. Um… Anyway, I meant are we _allowed_ to go up on the roof? I don't think we are."

Ruby chuckled. "I haven't seen any signs that say 'No going on the roof,' have you?" Boom! Perfect logic.

"No…" Weiss admitted, "but-"

"C'mon! It's perfect! It'll be a nice open space where nobody will get woken up and there won't be anybody there to bother you!"

Weiss narrowed her eyes. "Are you coming with me?"

"Well, yeah!" Of course! Why wouldn't she?

Weiss frowned at something Ruby had said, but then she sighed and nodded at the floor. "Okay, I suppose that will work."

Confused, Ruby tried to figure out why Weiss seemed so bummed. Was the roof not a good place? Did she not like heights or something? She hadn't seemed all that bothered when they'd hitched a ride on that Nevermore in the forest, but maybe she'd just been really good at hiding her fear…

"If the roof isn't a good idea, we can-"

"No, no." Weiss raised a palm to stop her from continuing. "The roof is actually a really good idea. As long as we don't get in trouble."

It was a good idea! Woo! Ruby bounced happily. "They'd have to catch us for us to get in trouble!" she laughed.

"Ssssh!" Weiss hissed, eyes flashing over to the sleeping forms of Blake and Best Sister.

"Right," Ruby whispered. "Sorry."

Weiss rolled her eyes. How did she so that so well? Whenever Ruby tried to roll her eyes she couldn't make the full circle and it kinda just made her face hurt.

"Are you going to change?" Weiss asked.

"Right! Be right back!"

She dashed to the closet and quickly stripped down, grabbing a random shirt of hers off the rack and throwing it over her head.

Weiss had reorganized and refolded pretty much all of Ruby's clothes last night without even saying anything, which made Ruby feel really bad. She _had_ said she'd come in and fix anything she'd messed up, hadn't she? Instead, Weiss had taken the time to fix everything herself and hadn't even asked for any recognition for it. If Ruby hadn't already thought that Weiss was secretly a nice person, that would have sealed it for her.

Also, Weiss had _so many_ clothes. Like holy heck, how did she fit all these in a _plane_, much less a few suitcases. And all of the clothes were really pretty. Weiss seemed to have a cold/wintery color scheme going on, but Ruby could understand that with how light her hair and skin were.

Ruby had also noticed Weiss' jewelry box on the dresser and really really really wanted to see inside it 'cause she was curious what rich-fancy-people jewelry looked like, but figured it would be rude to look without asking. Right? She was pretty sure that was right.

She hastily pulled on her jeans and then dashed back out to find Weiss waiting patiently out in the hallway. When Ruby came out, Weiss gave her a small nod and walked down the hallway.

Closing the door-quietly!-behind her, Ruby skipped after her partner. "So, what do you do, Weiss?"

"Do?"

"Yeah! Like, I know you play the piano-really good, by the way-"

"Well," Weiss interjected.

"Hm?"

"Nothing." She waved her hand for Ruby to continue.

"So yeah, you play the piano, and apparently the violin, so I guess you're like super musical. Do you do anything else in your free time?"

Weiss was quiet, her lips pursed and skewed to one side while she thought about her answer. Ruby wasn't really sure what there was to think about, but maybe Weiss had so many hobbies she couldn't remember all of them!

"I like to sing," Weiss said softly.

'_Wow. _Super _musical!' _

"I bet you sound amazing!" Ruby chirped.

A shy smile flashed across Weiss' face, and she briefly met Ruby's eyes before looking back at the ground.

"I _have_ been told I have a nice voice," she admitted.

They passed through the communal area, which was empty of people but the living room was littered with trash-potato chip bags, empty soda cans, dirty napkins, etc. Ruby noticed Weiss scowl at the mess. She understood that. Their dorm was great, and already people were just leaving garbage lying around! That seemed… rude.

Shaking her head, she turned back to Weiss. "Anything else?"

Weiss nodded slowly. "Well, once I get more comfortable with the violin, I want to pick up the cello, too. Maybe the viola, but that's really similar to the violin, so it wouldn't feel too different."

_Holy heck, this girl loves music!_

Weiss hugged her violin case again. "I used to draw and paint when I was little, but I wasn't as good as I was at music, so Father made me quit. I remember enjoying working with the paints and the charcoals. It was… messy, but it was supposed to be."

Her eyes seemed to go somewhere far away, and Ruby wanted to let her enjoy whatever memory she was slipping into, but something Weiss had said confused her. "But… why'd your dad make you quit if you enjoyed it?"

Weiss blinked in surprise at the question. Her mouth opened and closed as she struggled to figure out how to answer.

"I… well, he wanted me to focus on things I could be successful with."

Ruby guessed that made sense, but… "What does it matter if you were happy?"

Weiss sighed and gave her a sad smile. "Being happy isn't the only thing that matters, Ruby."

Ruby got kind of offended at the implication, like she thought life was only about having fun. "I know! You should also make sure you and everyone else is safe and… good to each other. But… I'm sure you were safe at home and that your family was good to you, so why would they not want you to be happy?"

"I don't know, Ruby," Weiss sighed. "My f-father values success more than happiness."

That sounded sad. And Weiss looked sad right now. At least, Ruby thought she did. It was hard to tell. Weiss' face didn't really reveal much about how she was feeling. But why would talking about family make her sad?

"Is he successful?" Ruby asked. Weiss' dad was some super important Dust guy, right?

Weiss laughed, but it didn't sound like a happy laugh. "He's the richest man in the world, so yes, I'd say he's successful."

Richest man in the world? No wonder Weiss seemed like such a princess! She basically _is_ the Princess of Dust!

They'd reached the lobby now, the only noise in the giant room the clicking of Weiss' heels on the tile.

"Is he happy?"

Weiss almost flinched at that question and looked off to the side. "He-I… I don't know, Ruby. Can we talk about something else? Or better yet, can we just not talk at all?" Her voice had grown angrier as she talked, and Ruby worried she'd messed up.

"I'm sorry!" she cried quickly, trying to salvage the conversation. "I didn't mean to upset you!"

"I'm not upset!" Weiss snapped at her, clearly upset. She seemed to realize her princess composure had broken, because she "ahemmed" and ran the back of her hand across her already super straightened skirt. "Just forget it," she grumbled.

"Okay," whispered Ruby, afraid if she said anything else she might make things worse. Maybe she should leave Weiss alone? But no, right? She couldn't let her partner be by herself on their first full day as a team! Especially when she was the team leader.

She needed to figure out how to get Weiss to be her friend. Ruby had made plenty of friends at Signal with the power of positivity! She just needed to do the same here. Weiss might need some _super _positivity, though.

What could Ruby do to get Weiss to relax? She loved music… What could Ruby do with that? She could… link Weiss to her playlist! Share her own music with her. She might like that. Or Ruby could learn an instrument herself, so they could play together! She and Yang had messed around with Dad's guitar when they were little, but they'd both ended up quitting 'cause it was so hard and no matter what the did it sounded gross. Maybe she could try again?

Or! Or she could get Weiss some paints! Painting made her happy, and her dad wasn't here to tell her no anymore. So then Weiss would be happy with her, right?

That was great! Now, how to get paints?

Last night, Yang and Blake had agreed they should go into the city today to shop for some stuff they'd need-snacks and food for their section of the fridge in the kitchen, toilet paper because nobody had thought to pack any, and Yang wanted to get one of those memory foam cover things for her mattress, which sounded like a good idea to Ruby, too. Maybe when they were shopping Ruby could convince Yang to get some paint supplies!

Should she tell her what they were for, though? Yang didn't really seem to like Weiss. Maybe she wouldn't want to spend money on a present for a girl that could probably buy the entire world. Hmm…

Weiss stopped, and Ruby realized they were standing outside, her partner looking up to the roof of their dorm building. Ruby blinked as she realized she hadn't even noticed they'd walked out into the chill morning air while she was deep in her super awesome best partner thoughts.

Weiss glanced at her briefly before summoning one of her super cool glyphs underneath herself, the white glowy lines emanating a soft hum as they launched her into the air with a small jump. Her ponytail fluttered as she flew up, and she stepped lightly onto the roof like she was just taking a normal step.

Weiss had just jumped two stories in the blink of an eye and hadn't even looked like she had needed to put in effort. How freaking cool was that?!

Now it was her turn!

She closed her eyes fell into that inner flower, marvelling in the feeling of her physical body peeling-no, blooming-away. She jumped up, and her increased movement and coupled with the way physical laws like air resistance and gravity seemed to affect her less in this form meant the action carried her almost ten feet into the air. She tensed her super ripped abs and swung her feet out in front of herself and run up the wall, her pumping legs beating out the force of gravity to bring her up to the second story. Passing the edge of the roof with a mighty push, she spun up into the air and landed in a super sweet kneeling pose like a bad-a. She pushed herself out of her semblance as she was landing, bringing herself back with an awesome whoosh of her cloak. Rose petals spun around her, some floating away on the breeze.

Upon standing, she found Weiss a little ways away, her eyes transfixed on a single petal that was drifting down toward her. She hold out a hand, and the petal floated into her palm, where she stared at it for a long while with an unreadable expression.

This was weird, right? "Uh, Weiss?"

Weiss' gaze snapped to Ruby's as she came back to reality from… wherever she just went.

"You okay?" Ruby asked.

"Yes," her partner stated matter-of-factly, flicking the petal away and marching off toward the center of the roof.

'_Uh…'_

Shrugging, Ruby decided to let it go. Everyone was entitled to a little weirdness, and Weiss was already pretty different as it was. She skipped after Weiss, who strutted over towards the center of the roof where there was a raised bit of concrete to sit on.

Wow. Ruby hadn't been wrong about the view either.

Just a couple hundred feet away, Beacon Tower stabbed into a now soft blue sky. In the other direction, she could see the sprawling city of Vale extended as far as she could see, buildings pinpointing the landscape all the way to the mountains that superimposed a blood orange horizon.

"Huaaaaah," she gasped in wonderment.

"Was that a word?" Weiss asked, a bemused eyebrow raised at Ruby.

Ruby just spread her hands out towards the dawn-lit city beneath them. "Look at this vieeeeeew!" she squealed.

Not squealed. She didn't squeal. It was more a… loud exclamation! Of passion! Yeah!

Weiss turned and looked out where Ruby was pointing, her regal expression softening as she scanned across the horizon. "It is quite beautiful," she agreed, tucking her skirt to her legs and sitting in one graceful motion.

Ruby sat cross-legged on the ground in front of her partner, head tilting side to side happily as she prepared for her own personal concert. She was with her partner, the weather was great, the view was beautiful, they were on the freaking roof which was so exciting! Today was starting off pretty great! She was a little sleepy, but that was okay. The chill morning breeze and the excitement of getting to hear Weiss play again was like an adrenaline shot straight to her veins.

Last night Weiss had been amazing on the piano. She sounded like a concert maestro. Admittedly, Ruby didn't actually know how grand master pianists sounded, but it was probably like Weiss. They obviously couldn't sound any better, 'cause that was impossible!

She'd felt terrible when she interrupted Weiss and upset her, but it had seemed like she'd been forgiven when they walked back to the room together. Ruby made a mental note to not interrupt Weiss this time.

Look at her, becoming a better partner already!

When Weiss set her case down next to her and popped it open, Ruby craned her neck curiously to see. First, Weiss pulled out what Ruby guessed was the bow, which actually had a _ton_ of strings-Ruby had always thought they just had one. Next, Weiss pulled out some weird tiny box and rubbed it up and down the strings of the bow. Ruby desperately wanted to ask what she was doing, but she had already vowed to herself that she wouldn't disturb Weiss from her Music Mode.

Finally, Weiss pulled out the violin itself, and man was it awesome. It had swirly patterns carved along the outer edges, and the twisty things at the end looked like they were solid gold. And Ruby had no idea wood could be so _shiny_. It was a dark wood that reflected the sunlight in bright oranges. All in all, it was pretty awesome. It wasn't, like, a super cool _weapon_ awesome, but it was pretty up there.

Plus, it was Weiss', so that made it even cooler.

The way Weiss handled it reminded Ruby of the way she handled Crescent Rose, and that more than anything told her it was special.

When Weiss tucked the violin under her chin and brought the bow up, Ruby perked up, excited to listen. The movement seemed to remind Weiss that Ruby was there, because she paused and looked over, regarding Ruby with another one of those unreadable expressions. Ruby flashed her a big smile.

Weiss returned a small, hesitant smile before lowering her bow. "Have you ever heard a violin before?" she asked. From the way her fingers were rubbing nervous circles in her bow, Ruby suspect she was having a little bit of stage fright.

"Yeah! There's violins in quite a few of my favorite songs. Although, I've never heard one in person before. But I'd never heard a piano in person before last night, and that was awesome!"

That got another small smile from her teammate. "Fair warning, I'm not anywhere near as good at the violin as I am at the piano."

Ruby gave another one of her patented Makes Everything Better smiles (that's what Mom and Dad always called them). "I'm sure you're still awesome!"

The way Weiss' brow quickly pulled together made Ruby think she didn't believe that, but then Weiss brought the bow back up and started playing.

It was awesome.

The violin itself sounded really pretty, the notes pure and smooth. And the song Weiss played was also awesome, a slow and majestically building song that fit so well with the landscape. When Ruby noticed Weiss close her eyes and start to rock with the music, her shoulders moving with the bow, Ruby knew she was in Music Mode.

She smiled. She wasn't sure she understood how or why Music Mode made Weiss the Grumpy relax so much, but it was nice to see, and it was nice to know that she could.

For a long while, Ruby relaxed and enjoyed the music and the skyline. It was nice! Very calming and soothing. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Still… still relaxing. But…

Ruby started to get bored.

What should she do? She could try to keep staying still and silent, but she didn't really trust herself to not blurt some random thought out if she kept having to contain herself.

Aha! She could do what she always did when she had to sit around and wait for her turn when Yang and Dad were sparring. Play videogames!

She pulled out her scroll and opened Grimm Crush. It was a pretty boring match-three puzzle game, but it passed the time. Plus, watching the tiny Nevermores squawk when they get squished was pretty funny. She remembered just before the app intro music to mute her volume! Phew, that was close.

She spent a few minutes making cute little Grimm pop-a part of her brain wondered if trivializing killer demon monsters like this was good for society. Suddenly, Weiss' violin let out a screechy noise and Weiss stopped.

"Damn it!" she growled.

'_Language!' _was Ruby's first thought, but she stopped herself from saying that. Instead, she asked, "What's wrong?" she asked, worried that noise meant something had snapped or stretched or… Ruby didn't actually know what kind of things could go wrong on a violin…

Weiss huffed angrily at herself. "Nothing! I just-I always miss this damn note!" She put the bow down and pinched her other arm. It looked like she was pinching it hard.

"I don't know why! I keep… I think my pinky's just too weak to hold the string down when I have to stretch that far across the frets. I just-ugh!"

She picked her bow up and started playing again, though angrier and louder this time. This time, Ruby payed attention, and saw Weiss' pinky kind of spasm when the screech happened.

Weiss clenched up this time, closing her eyes, lowering her head, and taking deep, frustrated breaths. She put the bow down and pinched her arm again. She was gripping the neck of the violin so tightly Ruby could see her knuckles pale-which seemed extra scary considering how pale she already was.

"Weiss, it's o-"

"Don't!" Weiss interrupted her, keeping her eyes pressed shut. "Just… don't, Ruby."

Snapping her mouth shut, Ruby stared wide-eyed and worried at her partner. Why was she so mad at herself for missing one note when she'd played so many so amazingly? She stayed quiet, though. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say to make Weiss feel better, and Weiss didn't want her to say _anything_.

She waited patiently while Weiss' breathing lightened and her muscles slowly untensed. Ruby was getting anxious though, watching where Weiss' fingernails were digging into her skin. How long before they _broke _skin and Weiss started bleeding?

Thankfully, Weiss let go of her arm just before Ruby was about to say something. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before opening her eyes and meeting Ruby's.

Ruby, for her part, did her best to give Weiss an encouraging smile, but she began to think her patented Makes Everything Better technology was broken because Weiss only gave her one of her weirdly sad smiles in return before looking at the ground.

Was she allowed to speak now?

"Sorry," Weiss whispered. "I didn't mean to yell at you. I just get…"

"Intense?" Ruby finished for her.

Weiss let out a light exhale that might have been a laugh. "Yeah, I suppose 'intense' might be a good word for it."

"I thought you sounded really good," Ruby offered hesitantly. When Weiss frowned and looked down at her hands, Ruby decided to change tactics. "Thank you for letting me listen."

Weiss' brought her eyes back to Ruby's, the piercing blues looking shy and unsure. Ruby tried her super smile tech again, and this time it seemed to work. Weiss gave her another one of those small, tight smiles, but this time she looked like her eyes were smiling too.

Weiss took another deep breath and roamed her eyes across Vale again. Ruby watched that peaceful, serene expression come back to her partner's face, a look that was subtly different from her stone-cold impassive mask.

Weiss turned back to Ruby with a smile. "How about some breakfast?"

Ruby through her arms up in the air. "Woohoo food!" she cheered. T

That got a light chuckle out of the Weiss (which Ruby tallied as a win), and they both stood to leave, Weiss packing her instrument away.

"You think the cafeteria's open?" Ruby asked excitedly. Those were some pretty good cookies yesterday, and she hoped they'd have some for breakfast, too.

Would they, though? Dad and Yang let her have cookies for breakfast all the time, but apparently that wasn't "normal" or something. Pfft! If you had to choose between breakfast with cookies and breakfast without cookies, why the heck would you ever pick breakfast _without cookies_?

Weiss nodded. "The schedule says it opens at eight AM on the weekdays."

Ruby glanced down at her scroll. 8:20 AM! What the heck, they'd been out there for almost an hour!

Wait, that meant Ruby had been mostly _quiet_ for almost an hour! Ha! Take that, Yang! Her sister always teased her for being unable to stay still and quiet for longer than a breath. She'd just stayed quiet for _way _longer than a breath. Like, at least… a hundred breaths!

How many breaths did she take in an hour? She should find out! She started counting.

One. Two. Three.

"I was thinking of going into town to do some shopping today," Weiss cut through her highly important task.

"Oh! We were saying last night that we wanted to do that too! I forgot to tell you. When should we go? After breakfast?"

Weiss nodded. "That sounds good."

They reached the edge of the roof. Ruby jumped off without any hesitation, falling into her semblance and to the ground. When her feet hit concrete she tucked into a roll, the whole experience feeling like she was getting squished by giant sponges. Normally that fall would wreck her knees and the roll would scrape her up pretty bad, but her body seemed to be immune-or at least, super duper resistant-to getting hurt while she was in her semblance. She hoped one she'd get fast enough with it that she could mitigate attacks by slipping in and out of Rose Form.

Beside her, Weiss dropped down, pressing her skirt into her leg with the hand holding the violin case. Right before she hit the ground, she reached up with her other hand and summoned a big black glyph above it that pulled her up. Once her momentum was stopped, she cut off the glyph and dropped the last couple of feet to the ground.

"That's so cool!" Weiss turned to Ruby at the words, slightly confused. "You could probably fall like a billion miles without a problem with that trick!" Ruby elaborated.

Weiss smiled at that. "Perhaps, though I hope I'm never in a situation where I'm falling a billion miles."

"That's fair," Ruby admitted. "Let's go see if the other two are awake!"

Weiss seemed unsure about that for some reason, but followed Ruby back into the dorms anyway.

When they got inside, Ruby noticed the big guy across the lobby, heading toward them. What was his name? Karen? No! Cardin!

"Goooood morning, Cardin!" Ruby called with a little wave.

It was hard to tell 'cause he was still a bit of a ways away, but it seemed like Cardin scoffed in response, which confused Ruby. Didn't he know he was supposed to say 'good morning' back?

When the guy got closer, Weiss spoke from Ruby's side. "Did you clean up the mess you and your team made in the living room last night?" she asked in her Ice Queen voice.

Cardin scoffed again. "Sure thing, girly," he drawled in his deep, dumb sounding dude voice. "It was right on top of my to do list this morning."

Instead of walking to the side to get past them like any normal person would, the big dumb brute pushed his way between them, making them both stagger to the side. The rudeness made Weiss gasp in shock, and just confused Ruby, really. Why was that… necessary?

As Cardin walked out, Weiss turned to Ruby with a scowl. "Are _all_ men just insufferable cretins?" she hissed.

Ruby wasn't really sure what a 'cretin' was, but it sounded like a bad thing. "Not all of them! My dad's awesome! And Professor Ozpin is pretty cool… Oh, and there's also your dad and brother!"

Weiss looked away and started walking again.

'_Hmm.'_

She seemed really upset. Her fist was clenched and she was walking-almost stomping-a lot faster than she was before.

Time to distract her!

"Hey, what did you want to get while we're shopping?" Ruby asked, skipping to keep up with her partner's angry walk.

"Hm? Oh, I kind of want to get one of those mattress covers for my bed. It's _incredibly _uncomfortable."

"Hey, Yang said the same thing!" Ruby bounced. "I want one, too. And maybe Blake will want one when she sees the rest of us with them. Oh! And we have to get some snacks. Cookies and strawberries and Blake wants something called sockeye salmon and Yang wants protein bars 'cause of course she does. What kinda snacks do you want?"

Weiss blinked at Ruby. "Well… I suppose I'd like to get some granola bars. Maybe some grapefruits. Or stuff for prosciutto cranberry crostini…"

Now it was Ruby's turn to blink in confusion. "What?"

Weiss smirked. "It's a… fancy appetizer. I'll show you."

Hey! Weiss was going to teach her some fancy people stuff! And it was fancy people _food_! Ruby loved pretty much every kind of food!

Except vegetables. Eff vegetables.

Uh-oh. What if Weiss' fancy food had veggies? Fancy people like veggies, don't they?

"That sounds great!" she bounced instead of voicing her devastating internal vegetable drama.

When they passed through the living room, Weiss again scowled at the mess still littering the place that Ruby now knew was Team CRDL's doing.

Jerks.

They got to the door and Weiss swiped them through. Yang was still snoring from her top bunk, though Blake was awake, looking pretty cute in her jammies propped up on her pillows reading a book.

"Hey," she greeted them. "Where'd you two go?"

Ruby shrugged casually. "Oh, you know. Just the roof." When Blake's eyebrows arched in surprise, Ruby giggled. "You want to go get breakfast and then go shopping in Vale?"

Blake gave a quick, longing glance at the book in her hands before sliding a bookmark into place and closing it. "Sure, that sounds nice."

Ruby bounced over to her sister's bunk and hopped up to shake Yang's shoulder. "Yang! Yang wake up you big, dumb Ursa! We gotta eat food and go shopping and eat food!"

She was ready when Yang sleepily swung a hand at her. Giggling as she hopped down out of the way, Ruby kept needling her sister awake. "C'mon! Weiss wants to buy prosho cranberry croties!"  
"That's not at _all_ what I said," came Weiss' haughty voice from their bathroom.

Ruby just giggled again.

Yang sat up and rubbed her eyes groggily. "Ruby," she mumbled, "Weiss doesn't really seem like the type to make up nonsense words like you do."

"But she did! I swear!"

"I most certainly did not!" Weiss stalked out of their bathroom, wearing a small smile and a pair of silver earrings and necklace with a pretty blue stone in it that she hadn't been wearing before. "Prosciutto cranberry crostini is a delicious appetizer or snack and is absolutely _not_ made up."

Ruby crossed her arms and looked at Yang with an "I told you so" face.

Yang ran with the joke. "Holy crap. You're right. She _does _make up words."

Weiss scoffed loudly and rolled her eyes in that impressive way she had. It made Ruby and Yang laugh, and Ruby noticed Blake was pursing her lips in amusement too.

"I don't really know what crostini is," Blake said, "but I do know what prosciutto is, and I can confirm it is both not made up _and_ very delicious."

"Yes! Thank you, Blake!" Weiss said with a dramatic wave of her hands. "At least _someone_ here has some culture!"

"Alright, settle down there, Ice Queen," Yang chuckled as she climbed down from her bunk. "Let us get ready and we can head out. Blake, you want to change first?"

"Oh! Sure." Blake slid out of her covers and entered their bathroom with no more noise than a soft click.

'_How is she so quiet?!'_

Ruby saw an opportunity to tease her sister. "Well, Weiss, we might as well go hang out on the roof for another hour. We're going to have to wait for _Yang_ to get ready."

"Alright, c'mere, you," Yang growled. Before Ruby could react, Yang's hand snaked out and wrapped around her wrist, pulling her into the inescapable grasp of Worst Sister as she began the most brutal tickle campaign _ever_.

"Listen here, you little pipsqueak!" Yang shouted as Ruby fell into a fit of squeals and giggles. "Just 'cause you're 'team leader' now doesn't mean you get to go around sassing your big sister! You will treat me with love and respect of so help me I will tickle you into oblivion!"

Ruby couldn't breathe, and she couldn't escape. There was never any escaping Yang's hold. "Yang!" she whined through her brief gasps of air that were the only thing keeping her alive through this inhumane torture. "Yang stop! I was jus-Yaaang! I was joking! Yang! No! Stooooop! Ya-please!"

Yang let go of her with a satisfied laugh. As soon as she was free, Ruby jumped across the room and squeezed her ribs as she struggled to breath.

"Yang-uh!" she whined. "You can't-*_gasp_*-you can't just tickle me in front of our teammates like that! It's unprofessional for a team leader to be tickled!"

Yang grinned wickedly at her. "Oh, I can't?" She took threatening step forward.

Ruby was ready this time, and used a burst of her semblance to put herself behind Weiss.

"Weiss, protect your fearless leader!"

Her partner crossed her arms. "What part of you hiding behind my back from your own sister is fearless?"

Ruby shook her head quickly. "I'm not _hiding_ behind you, I'm strategically using you as a meat shield!"

That got laughs from both of them.

Yang and Blake's bathroom door opened and Blake poked her head out. "Is everything okay? It sounded like someone was dying." From the way the corner of her mouth was pulled up ever so slightly, though, Ruby suspect she knew exactly what had happened.

"Oh, nobody's dying," Yang responded as she inspected her fingernails. "Just Ruby's dignity."

"Oh, she had some?" Weiss commented flippantly.

"Hey!" Ruby piped up, still keeping Weiss between herself and Yang.

Yang chuckled again before turning to Blake. "You done in there?"

"Mhm!" Blake stepped back inside quickly for something and then walked up, leaving the door open for Yang.

Ruby didn't relax until Yang had firmly closed the door and was completely out of sight. Once it was safe, she collapsed onto Weiss' bed with a relieved huff.

Blake sat on the edge of her bed and looked over at Ruby with that amused not-quite-a-smile. "Does she do that often?"

Ruby threw her arms up. "_All _the frickin' time!" she whined. "She's the absolute _worst_!"

"I thought you said she was the _best_ sister ever," Blake reminded her.

"Yeah, well if she keeps this up, I'll happily pass the title over to Weiss' sister."

Weiss smiled at that. "Don't worry, Ruby. She already has it."

"Is she on a secret mission right now?" Ruby asked, sitting up excitedly. "Is she beating up some bad guy White Fang dudes or something in some undisclosed location?"

Ruby noticed Blake frown out of the corner of her eye, but before she could ask about it, Weiss answered.

"Well, if it's a _secret_ mission, I couldn't really tell you, could I?"

"Awww, come on! We won't tell anyone else! You can trust us, we're your team!"

That seemed to give Weiss pause. "Well…" she said slowly, "honestly, I don't know. She's not actually allowed to tell me about most of her assignments."

"Aw. That sucks."

Weiss shrugged lightly with one shoulder, a weirdly stiff movement that made Ruby think Weiss didn't shrug very often. "It is what it is," she said. "Winter became a huntress and joined the military to serve and protect, not to have cool stories for her little sister."

"Her name is Winter?" Ruby asked. "That's so cool! My mom's name was Summer!"

Weiss tilted her head quizzically at Ruby, and opened her mouth to say something, but then decided against it.

"What?" Ruby asked. "They were both named after seasons. I just thought that was pretty cool." Her gaze dipped a little sadly at the end. She thought it had been a neat little thing she and Weiss had in common, but apparently Weiss didn't agree.

Except Weiss' eyes went wide and she stammered out a quick apology. "No! No, I'm sorry. You're right, that is pretty neat. I just…" she trailed off, _really_ unsure of what she wanted to say. "You… you said your mom's name _was _Summer?"

'_Oh.'_

Weiss' hands fiddle nervously. "Can I ask what happened to her?"

"... Of course!" Ruby said. That all too familiar ache of emptiness and sadness that had come to take the place of her mother in her heart was creeping in, but Weiss was asking because she cared, right? And this was something important that partners should share, right?

"She left on a hunt one day when I was little and never came home," she explained simply with a small shrug.

"I'm sorry, Ruby," Weiss said softly, sitting down slowly next to Ruby on her bed. Across the room, Blake was watching intently, amber eyes flicking as she took in pretty much everything about Ruby's body language.

Ruby straightened up and did her best to change the tone, smiling broadly. "It's no big deal! Dad said she died as she lived, a hero. Which is what I always knew she was. So it's okay. I bet wherever she was she saved a lot of people."

Weiss was looking at her with this weird expression that Ruby didn't understand. What was she thinking right now?

The uncomfortably personal conversation was cut short when Yang yanked open her bathroom door and jumped out dramatically.

"All right, babes! Who's ready for some shopping?!"

Ruby jumped up, grateful for the distraction. "Woohoo, shopping! And food!" She dashed out the door and into the communal area. They'd hopefully think Ruby was just excited, but really she just needed to get out of that room. She took a breath and tried to get some control over her emotions.

Whenever she started missing Mom, she'd force herself to think about happy memories with her instead. Like going to the market to buy food and coming home with just a giant basket of strawberries, making Dad roll his eyes and go back to the market with Yang to get actual food. Or like her and Mom taking the petals from her semblance and hiding them in all of Dad's stuff through fits of excited giggles. Or like Mom coming back from a hunt and immediately making Yang and her a big meal of pancakes, even if it was night time, even if they'd already eaten.

"_You know why you're getting pancakes, Ruby baby?" _

"_Because you love me!" _

"_You bet your little petals I do." _

Ruby smiled at the memories. A pang of nostalgia washed over her, but it faded away into a gratefulness that she'd ever had such an awesome mom in the first place.

And here Ruby was now, studying to become a huntress like Mom. Even in the same academy as Mom had. She hoped Mom would be proud of her right now.

Ruby knew that walking down the same path as her mom had meant that she could meet the same end, but she would learn from her mom's mistake, the one mistake she ever made.

Ruby wouldn't ever go out alone. She'd make sure she always had her team beside her.


	5. Seeding 1-5

**Hey all! This is my first quick foreword before a chapter! :O First, I just wanted to say I hope everyone is enjoying the story, and a special thank you to all of those that have left reviews and kind words. It means a lot. One note for this chapter: If the formatting for the text messages seems weird, I apologize. It looks better on google docs where I type these up and I'm still trying to figure out formatting on . Also, we're getting close to the point where I'm going to need to put in some original characters! :O Believe it or not, there need to be more than 16 named students in a school! The other freshmen team gets name dropped here. Stay tuned for more! **

* * *

Her teammates had been planning on taking a bus into the city.

A bus! Her, Weiss Schnee, riding public transportation. The thought still made her shudder, even though she'd already ordered them a towncar and they were now standing in front of Rem-Mart in the slightly uncomfortable summer heat.

She also had an issue shopping in a general store, but ordering custom, high-end bedding that might take days or even weeks to arrive seemed like a little… much, even to her.

Besides, she'd always been curious what it was like inside one of these stores, which looked like it was just a massive, repurposed warehouse from the outside.

She'd actually met the CEO and majority shareholders of the global conglomerate that is Rem-Mart. From the way they had presented themselves, she'd gotten the impression they'd never actually shopped in one of their own franchises.

The people she saw heading in and out of the store furthered that suspicion. Weiss tried to suspend her judgement, though; she'd only ever been around people of money and status, and she needed to realize that most of the world was not part of that social circle. If she didn't, she was no better than her parents. Besides, her teammates didn't look out of place at all here, and they were alright, right?

They were yet another family Weiss hadn't gotten to choose, not really, but she'd try to make the best of it.

Ruby skipped ahead of them excitedly. "Come on, team! Operation Shop-for-Stuff-and-Things is now underway!"

"You really are terrible at naming these missions," Blake teased with a shake of her head.

"What was that?" Ruby called over her shoulder.

"Oh, nothing!"

Smiling, Yang turned to Blake and Weiss as they followed after their (evidently not) fearless leader. "Alright, I'm going to warn you guys now. We _have_ to let her push the cart."

"Why is that?" Blake asked while Weiss wondered why they wouldn't just have an employee do that for them. Isn't that what they were for?

"One, if she doesn't she's gonna end up racing around like a maniac. So normal Rubes. And B, if we let her do the actual shopping, she's going to grab literally every food in the store." She shook her head as she gazed into some past memory with a grin. "Dad and I have somehow managed to condition her to always keep both hands on the cart if she's pushing it, so as long as we let her do that we should be fine."

Weiss managed to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Why were they having to _manage_ their "leader"? Still, she had to admit-only to herself-that the imagery of a tiny Ruby running around a store grabbing all the food she could reach was… cute.

Stepping across the threshold of the automatic doors, Weiss' eyes widened in surprise. She hadn't known what she was expecting, but it wasn't this.

The massive warehouse connection was evidently correct. The building was just a single, giant room. Along the outside, shelves towering to the ceiling were stuffed full of goods all the way to the top. How were they supposed to get anything from the top shelf? In the middle of everything, tables and racks were set up with what looked like discount clothing, behind which was arrayed cheap furniture. Towards the back were freezer aisles with cold foods, and Weiss thought she could spot a deli in far corner.

The entire place was designed for efficiency rather than presentation or aesthetics, something that Weiss frowned at, though the pragmatic part of her brain recognized the logic behind it.

Cupping her hands, Yang yelled after her little sister, who was getting further and further from them as she skipped in the direction of a snack aisle. "Hey, Rubes! Grab a cart!"

Ruby stopped and wheeled around, a big smile on her face. "Okay!" she called back cheerily, dashing off to the side to pull a strangely shaped metal cage on wheels out of a line of them. Apparently she was none the wiser to Yang and her father's manipulations.

She wheeled the cart over to the team and stood next to Weiss hopping up and down excitedly. Her eyes were roaming all over the store-mostly over the food aisles-and her little hands were clenching the handle of the cart tightly.

When Weiss realized she was smiling at the scene, she wiped the look from her face, shaking her head and turning away.

"Where shall we start?" she asked, trying to push things forward.

"Food!" Ruby chirped.

Yang chuckled. ""Calm your nips, you little culinary vacuum. We'll get food last so the cold stuff stays cold."

"Last?" Ruby wailed in despair. "But Yaaaaaang!"

Grinning, Yang walked forward and gave the cart a tug to get Ruby started forward. "Let's go check out the clothes first. You need some new shorts, right?"

Ruby bounced. "Yeah!" It seemed her sadness at not getting food first was wiped away at the prospect of clothes shopping. Weiss could relate to that.

They made their way over to the open space dotted with tables piled high with shirts, pants, sweaters, and more. The articles on the bottom of the stacks seemed to have been folded, albeit haphazardly, but the clothing on top had clearly been rifled through by customers. Things were strewn about all over, most things not even anywhere near the correct pile anymore. It made Weiss' brain itch horrendously, the complete lack of neatness or organization almost an affront to her eyes. She was tempted to just stop and start folding everything into their correct spots, but the prospect of touching something that so many grubby hands had touched made her grimace.

Yang didn't seem to have any such compunctions, though. She roamed the tables, flipping through shirts and shorts that she might like, Ruby bouncing along behind her. Weiss noted that Yang was contributing to the disarray, simply tossing things she decided against back onto the tables without folding them or bothering to make sure to sort it back correctly.

Weiss shuddered. Four years of this.

Four years wasn't really that long, right? In the grand scheme of things. About a twentieth of an average lifespan. Five percent. Then she could leave these dirty children behind and go become the master huntress she was meant to be.

"How 'bout these?" Yang's voice stirred Weiss from her misery The blonde was holding up a pair of female athletic running shorts, red with white stripes down the side. Ruby looked at them for only an instant before nodding.

"Looks good!"

She wasn't going to even try them on?

Looking around, Weiss realized there wasn't even a changing room for Ruby to try them on anyway. What kind of establishment was this?

A loud gasp called her attention back to her partner. "I want that one!"

Yang looked over at her sister. "Which one?"

Ruby pointed towards one of the hanger racks with her nose and an index finger-though she still kept both hands securely clamped to the cart. She was pointing at a line of sleeveless, light grey button-down blouses, with a simple frocket and tiny red buttons. It reminded Weiss of-

"Why?" Yang asked. "'Cause Weiss is wearing one?"

"Yeah!"

Weiss blinked, surprised about how unabashedly the girl admitted to wanting to copy Weiss' fashion style. There was no nervousness, no embarrassment, no aversion to having a second-rate version of what her partner was wearing.

When Yang smacked her forehead, Ruby went on the defensive. "What?! It looks awesome. Or at least, Weiss _makes_ it look awesome. Maybe I can look awesome in it, too."

Heart twisting around in a weird combination of guilt and appreciation, Weiss gave Ruby a shy smile when the girl turned to beam at her.

Yang sighed. "Ruby… I'll get you this, but I hope you know we can't dress you up like Weiss."

Ruby frowned. "But why not? Her clothes look great!"

Yang gave Ruby a sad smile. "Because we can't afford it, Rubes."

The twisting guilt Weiss' heart was suffering from doubled down when Ruby's face fell. "Oh, right," the brunette conceded.

What was Weiss supposed to do right now? What should she say? Should she even say anything?

"But this one's okay?" Ruby asked her sister, silver eyes wide and hopeful.

Yang hissed a frustrated breath through her teeth. "Yeah, this one's okay."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered, jumping once in the air.

Weiss noticed that Blake's eyes, which had been flitting back and forth between the two sisters, were now watching her inquisitively. Could Blake tell she was so confused, wanting to do something but not sure what?

A part of her, a part her father had worked very hard to purge from her being, wanted to just take Ruby shopping at stores that sold the kinds of clothes she wore. But… Schnees don't give charity… unless it was for a tax break or PR, of course.

Maybe that was wrong? Maybe taking Ruby for a clothing run would be a good thing! The girl had an abysmally small wardrobe, after all. And Weiss would certainly prefer being seen with a team leader that was better dressed than the tattered jeans and faded t-shirt she was in now.

That made sense. It was for the team, right?

She decided to speak up. "How about…" She almost stopped when her entire team's eyes swivelled to her. "How about this weekend we go shopping at some boutiques and I'll get you some-" the corner of her mouth tugged upwards "-_actual_ fancy people clothes."

She initially thought she'd made the right decision making the offer from the way Ruby went wide-eyed in excitement. "Really? Y-"

"No," declared Yang with an air of finality. "No, that's okay. Thanks though, Weiss." The tone of her voice didn't seem to hold much gratitude though.

"But Ya-"

"No," she repeated, cutting off her sister. She grabbed one of the shirts Ruby had been asking for. "You're still a small, right?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Great!" Yang tossed the blouse into the cart. "Got some shorts and a shirt, time for some food, yeah?"

Ruby hung her head, conceding that the argument was over but clearly not understanding why.

Neither did Weiss, for that matter. What had she done wrong? Wasn't offering to get Ruby clothes a friendly, generous thing to do? Was Yang shutting down the idea simply because she didn't like Weiss? That didn't seem fair to Ruby…

"Did you guys want anything from here?" Ruby asked dejectedly, moving her head to address Blake and Weiss but not meeting their eyes.

"I'm good for now," Blake answered. "But thank you," she added, trying to pull Ruby out of her funk.

When Ruby flashed a small glance at Weiss she shook her head, staying silent because she didn't know what words to say.

"Let's start with the cookies, Ruby!" Yang said, injecting a cheeriness into her voice that sounded incredibly genuine.

That seemed to do the trick. While she didn't bounce excitedly, Ruby did smile at that, the expression reaching her eyes as she pushed the cart after Yang.

When Blake moved to follow, Weiss reached out and gently tapped the girl's elbow. She stopped and turned, a knowing smile on her face. She'd been expecting Weiss to ask her about this.

"Did I do something wrong?" she asked anyway, only slightly perturbed that she'd been seen through so easily.

"I don't know, Weiss," Blake replied apologetically. "Maybe Yang just doesn't want your money-"

"Maybe she just doesn't like me and has decided to be a child," Weiss griped bitterly.

Blake, surprisingly, nodded. "Maybe. I don't know her well enough to understand this whole thing. This is probably something you should ask _her_."

Weiss huffed at the prospect. If Yang wanted to be unpleasant, Weiss could too. She saw no reason to try to reach out or make amends when she hadn't done anything wrong.

Blake seemed to read something in her reaction, because the girl gave Weiss a small shrug and headed after the sisters.

Weiss trudged sullenly after her, indignation still making her ears steam.

"Ruby, pick three. Three!"

"But Yaaaaaaaang-uh! How am I supposed to pick between them? They're all delicious! Why can't we get one of each?"

"Because you should also be eating _real_ food at some point, Ruby."

"Ugggh. I just wanna eat cookies!"

"Believe me, Pipsqueak. I know." Yang placed a hand on Ruby's shoulder to cease her continuous bouncing. "Now pick three."

Ruby scowled and perused the stand of cookie packages arranged in front of her, concentrating so hard it was like she was having to pick million Lien stock investments.

"Okay… Funky-Os… the double Funk ones! And, ummmm, Fudge 'N' Butters… aaaaaaand ChocoChunks!"

Yang tossed one package of each of the designated cookie brands as they were called out. "Good!" she sighed as the ChocoChunks hit the bottom of the cart. "Now we'll come back and do more cookie shopping in a _week_, okay? So make these last."

Ruby pouted in response.

"Stop it!" Yang said in exasperation at Ruby's adorable expression.

"No!"

Rolling her eyes, Yang turned and walked on, the rest of the team following behind her.

Ruby turned to Weiss and slowed to fall in step beside her. "Hey, Weiss?"

Weiss suppressed a smile. "Yes, Ruby?"

"What's a boutique?"

Weiss laughed out loud at that, and beside her Blake hid a smile behind her hand. "It's… It's just a fancy people word for a clothing store. They usually have fancy people clothes."

"Oh! Gotchya." Ruby nodded to herself. "By the way, what do you need for your prosheeto cranberry crosidoti?"

Weiss snorted at the valiant attempt. What did she need, though? The bread for the crostinis involved… something, right? She could remember watched Klein toast the baguette slices… covered in… olive oil! That was it.

She felt a brief moment of pride that she still remembered that. The last time she'd seen Klein make crostinis must have been eleven or twelve years ago.

"I'll need olive oil, a baguette, cranberry sauce, prosciutto, and goat cheese," she rattled off.

Ruby wrinkled her nose at her. "Ewww, goat cheese?"

Weiss grinned. "It's good, trust me."

Ruby nodded, satisfied with that answer. "Okay!"

Was it that easy to gain Ruby's trust? Just say the words "trust me"? Once again Weiss was stumped trying to figure out if the girl was sweet and innocent or just naive.

"Hey, Weiss?"

"Yes, Ruby?" A part of Weiss felt like this little bit they did would get old fast, but another found it highly amusing.

"What's prosciutto?"

That's a fair question. "It's… a specially cured ham, basically."

"So it's ham, fake cheese-"

"Goat cheese."

"Sure, questionable cheese, bread, and cranberries."

Weiss rolled her eyes at the jabs at goat cheese, but it was with a small smile. She'd not been a fan of the stuff either when she was little. "Yes, that's it."

"None of those things sound like chocolate or sugar."

Weiss nodded sagely. "Well spotted, Ruby. You are correct. None of those ingredients are chocolate, nor are they sugar."

"That sounds terrible." The way she said it, so matter-of-fact, made Weiss laugh again. When she turned to look at Ruby, the girl was giving her one of those beaming smiles.

"You know there are more flavors out there than chocolate and sugar, right?"

Ruby rolled her eyes-or tried to, it didn't really work. Her eyes just kind of flicked from side to side and then up and down. "Of course!" she admonished Weiss. "There's also strawberry!"

There it was again. Strawberries. It seemed so out of place compared to the flavors Ruby seemed to like-namely, sweets.

"Why-"

"Oh, Weiss," Blake said at the same time. When Weiss turned her way, Blake lifted a finger to indicate the wooden rack filled with freshly baked bread, each wrapped in their own foil blankets.

"Oh, look at that," Weiss said, reaching over to grab a baguette from among them. She gave it a light squeeze to make sure it was still soft and, satisfied, placed it gently in the cart.

Ahead of them, Yang stopped. "I'm guessing the proshushu is in the deli?" she asked Weiss, pointing towards the deli that had been barely visible from the entrance. When Weiss nodded in response, Yang continued, "Good, good, we should probably get some sandwich stuff, too."

"Deli mustard!" Ruby cheered.

Yang nodded, smirking. "Yes, but there's _still _more stuff in a sandwich than deli mustard, Rubes. No matter what Dad tells you."

They walked up together, everyone inspecting the rows of meats and cheeses.

"You can go first, Weiss," Yang said.

Was that an olive branch? Weiss wasn't sure if she should be grateful for the consideration or not. Regardless, she stepped up to the counter and waited (impatiently) for one of the two employees to notice her. When one of them did, he had the audacity to _walk_ over to her with a generic customer service smile, as if _that_ would forgive the lack of expediency.

If there was one boon of being a Schnee in Atlas that she missed, it was not ever having to wait on service. Everyone recognized the Schnees in their home kingdom and always made sure they were provided the best and fastest care available.

Whatever. It wasn't worth making a big deal out of in front of her teammates. They seemed to think she was… bratty… enough already.

"What can I get you?" drawled the man in the hairnet before her.

"Do you have any prosciutto koyori?" she asked, still scanning the selections in front of her trying to find it.

"We do not, unfortunately," the worker lamented. He walked to one side and pointed at one of the rolls of packed and cured meats in the display window. "The only prosciutto we have is prosciutto sorisi."

Weiss sighed. "That's… unfortunate."

Ruby hopped over to her, dragging the cart along with her. "What's that mean?" she asked.

"Koyori is a village in Vacuo that makes what is widely considered the best prosciutto in the world. As a result, it's pretty expensive. Relatively, of course." It wasn't expensive to her.

The man behind the counter nodded. "It's a little too expensive for us to import. However, the prosciutto from Soris-" he gestured again at the display case "-is also quite delicious, and it's local and fresh…?"

He had been looking at Weiss as he said it, and something in her expression made him trail his statement into a question at the end.

"Would it be possible to special order from Koyori?" she asked. Her parents had stores special order imports all the time.

The man stammered nervously. "Uhhh… I'm not sure. I'd have to ask my manager. Would you be buying a whole ham?"

Would she be able to eat a whole ham before it went bad? Probably not. But she would be sharing with her team, right? Ruby could probably eat the whole thing herself if she ended up liking it. And of course she would, it's delicious.

"Sure," she said simply.

The deli-man frowned. "I think… Wouldn't that be, like, a couple hundred dollars?"

Weiss shrugged. "Most likely."

The man blinked. "Okay, well my manager isn't in today. I could give him a call if yo-"

Weiss waved her hand. She'd try this later, if she ended up making this dish again. "It's fine for now. Please give me the sorisi."

The man almost sagged in relief. "How much?"

That seemed like a strange question. It's right there on the tag. "It says fifteen dollars a pound…"

"No, how much do you want?" the man clarified with a confused frown. "Quarter pound? Half pound?"

"Oh!" That's embarrassing. She could feel her teammates mocking grins tingling the back of her neck. "I suppose… a pound?" She actually had no idea how much she needed.

"A pound is quite a lot," Blake murmured to her.

"Is it? Okay, then… half a pound?" She looked at Blake for confirmation, who nodded.

The worker pulled the prosciutto and brought it to a big machine, where he cut off a slice. After placing it in wax paper he walked back and held it over the counter to Weiss. "Is that a good thickness?" he asked.

Was she supposed to take the slice? Couldn't she judge the thickness from here? From the way he was holding it out to her, she guessed she was supposed to take it.

She reached out gingerly, briefly amused at how dainty her pale hands looked compared to the workers. "Yes, that looks fine," she said after glancing at the slice of meat in her hands, to which the man nodded and walked back.

She honestly had no idea.

This seemed like such a strange way to package such a product. Turning to Blake, she whispered, "This isn't half a pound, is it?"

Blake, for whatever reason, started cracking up. Ruby laughed along with her, while Yang buried her face in her hands with a hysterical grin.

Weiss didn't know what she'd done wrong, but there was clearly something, and it was clearly humiliating. She could _feel_ her cheeks burning red as she decided the tile patterns looked incredibly interesting.

"No, doofus," Blake finally said. "He just gave you a sample to try and make sure you like it."

Oh. That made much more sense. "Right. Of course."

"Have you not been to a deli before?" Yang asked, confusion and amusement warring across her face.

Weiss looked back at the ground. "I've never been shopping for food at all before," she admitted.

"What?" Yang's expression was now incredulous. "How is that even possible?"

Her tone prickled at Weiss' skin, putting her on the defensive. "I never needed to!" she spat defiantly. "Our staff keeps our kitchen fully stocked and makes us whatever we want. Or we just go out to eat." The only shopping she'd ever done was clothes shopping with her mother and/or sister and gift and flower shopping when the wedding of some business partner of her father's was coming up.

"Wow," said Yang. As in, '_Wow, I'm surprised you're so incompetent and dependant on servants. Wow, you sure are spoiled. Wow, what are you even doing here on your own?'_

"Look-" she started to sneer at Yang.

"Can I try some to?" Ruby asked from her side, jarring Weiss and stopping her from spewing whatever venom she'd been about to spit. Ruby was looking between the slice of prosciutto in Weiss' hands and Weiss' face.

"Oh, yes, of course." Weiss tore off a long strip of the meat-which was surprisingly hard to do with how stringy it was-and then held the wax paper up for Ruby to take the slice.

Instead, the girl opened her mouth, the corners of a smile still discernible.

So Weiss had to hand feed her team leader now?

Blake gave her a nudge and then pointed at Ruby's hands, _still_ gripping tightly to the cart.

Oh, right.

She pinched the strip of prosciutto and, being careful not to actually touch Ruby, dropped it into the girl's mouth.

As soon as it hit her tongue, Ruby clamped her mouth shut and started chewing. Her eyes went wide. "Mm! 'At's rearry 'ummy!" she said with vigorous, happy nods at Weiss.

Pleased that she'd picked a hit, though confused why that please her, Weiss smiled and tried a bit herself. It _was_ quite good. Not as salty and nutty as she'd like, but passable.

"Here you go." The man handed a sealed bag with many slices-what Weiss guessed was half a pound-over the counter. "Anything else?"

Taking the bag from the man and stepping back, Weiss shook her head.

Yang stepped forward. "Yeah, hey man. Could we also get a pound of the Emerald Forest ham and and half a pound of the Mantle-Jack Cheddar?"

Weiss tuned out and looked around the store, undercurrents of embarrassment and anger making her skin flush as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet.

"I'm going to go look around," she said to nobody in particular. "I'll be right back."

"Want some company?" Ruby asked her, already turning the cart to follow.

"No, it's okay." Weiss put a hand on the cart to stop Ruby's pursuit. "I just want to… explore by myself for a bit. First time shopping and all." She offered what she hoped was an easy smile, but from the concern that flashed across Ruby's eyes, she suspected it hadn't worked.

"Are you sure?"

Before Weiss could respond, Blake placed a gentle hand on Ruby's arm and give a small nod. Ruby looked from Weiss to Blake and back.

"Okay…"

Weiss gave Blake an appreciative nod. Placing the pack of prosciutto into the cart next to the baguette, she then turned and wandered down the aisles created by the fridge displays of food. As she walked, Weiss tried to find some of that calmness she got from her music, that she'd had that morning playing the violin. That had actually been an enjoyable experience, despite her expectations of Ruby completely ruining it. The girl had actually stayed remarkably quiet, and as loathe as Weiss was to admit it, Ruby's compliments had actually helped dissolve a lot of her frustrations when she kept failing to hit that one damn note.

But what was Yang's problem? What did she expect, that Weiss Schnee, heiress to the biggest corporation in the world, had gone out shopping for Funky-Os and sandwich bread once a week? No. She hadn't. And there was nothing wrong with that, right? She hadn't missed anything important, right?

Right.

Weiss could out fight, out study, and out think that judgemental blonde, and those were the things that mattered for huntresses, which is what they were there to be. So what did it matter if Weiss didn't know how to order _sandwich meat_?

In an attempt to distract herself, she browsed the foods in the cases she walked by, slowly and deliberately reading each label.

Wait.

She stopped. Right next to her was a row of vacuum sealed packs of goat cheese.

'_Well that's convenient.' _She grabbed a block of the cheese. The cold, squishy feel was strange, but she found it curious.

Instead of wandering aimlessly, she could find the last two ingredients for her snack. Giving herself a goal to work towards would go much further in terms of calming her down.

It took her about ten minutes to find the olive oil, during which time she also grabbed a box of a bran cereal she liked. The olive oil was with a bunch of other cooking oils, and seeing "vegetable oil" still confused her just as it had when she was little. _Which _vegetables? Why weren't they worth naming?

Winter had told her it was the blood of all the vegetables she didn't finish eating. That the leftover veggies were slaughtered and turned into oil, and it was very sad and painful. Weiss always finished her veggies after that, even when she'd gotten old enough to realize Winter had just been messing with her to get her to eat them.

Thinking about Winter reminded Weiss of the last time she'd mentioned her sister a few hours ago, when Ruby revealed that her mother had been a huntress that died on a mission. Weiss hadn't known what to say then. She could never have imagined that such a sweet and happy girl was carrying around so much pain and tragedy.

And it was definitely a tragedy. It was clear in every part of Ruby's voice and body language that she loved her mother very much. And yet she still was the happiest person Weiss had ever met.

Would Weiss be able to take such a thing as well as Ruby had? Weiss had lost all respect for her mother years ago, but had she also lost all love for her? Had she ever really loved her to begin with?

When she was little, yes. She loved her mother as all daughters were supposed to. But at some point Weiss realized that the woman was a cold-hearted, stuck up socialite that did nothing but judge others and yet offered nothing of value to the world. Then her father had made that fateful… awful confession, and Willow Schnee added self-pitying alcoholic to her resume.

Was it worse that Weiss probably wouldn't care if she got a call to inform her that her mother was dead? Probably.

But maybe that was a bad comparison. What if it was Winter? What if she got a call and found out Winter had died while out on assignment? That… That would probably destroy her. And it was a very real possibility with Winter's line of work. Weiss already was not the happiest of people. She knew that. If Winter died…

She pulled out her scroll and flipped through a couple screens to send a message to her sister. But what should she say? "Please don't die"? "I don't want to lose you"? No, she'd just check in and see how she was doing. This was just any other normal conversation between sisters. No reason to throw whatever this weird emotional anguish Weiss was now freakishly prone to for whatever reason.

**Hello, Winter. How is your day going?**

She resumed her quest for her cranberry sauce, knowing it would likely be a while before her sister was able to respond.

Where would cranberry sauce even be? She remembered Klein had pulled it out of the refrigerator, so it would be with the cold foods, right?

Wandering through the cold and freezer aisles and rubbing warmth into her exposed arms, she started to grow a little frustrated at herself. She'd been searching for ten minutes and had absolutely no clue where the stuff was, and no idea how she could figure it out. It wasn't with the produce. It wasn't with the frozen fruits and veggies. Where the Crucible was it?

"Weiss."

She turned to see Blake down the aisle towards her.

"Yes?"

"We're ready to check out. Do you have everything you need?"

Weiss shook her head.

Blake looked at her as if expecting more elaboration. "Well? What are you missing?"

"Oh!" She turned and pointed back out toward the center of the store. "It's not with the cold-"

"Stop!"

Blake froze, eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

Weiss fiddled with the hem of her skirt. "I'd like to find it myself… Please."

Weiss watched as some sort of understanding dawned on Blake's face. Understanding of what, Weiss didn't know. She just wanted to complete her "quest" herself. It wasn't anything beyond that. Simple.

But Blake nodded empathetically. "The sisters are getting restless, so I'll buy you another five minutes. After that, we'll send Ruby after you. Without the cart. And you have to buy all the extra crap she picks up." The girl smiled wickedly, extremely pleased with her threat.

Weiss couldn't help but smile, too. Honestly, a part of her was curious what would happened if they unleashed Ruby on this store. Not curious enough to find out, though. She suspected even _her_ sizable monthly allowance wouldn't be enough to fund a Ruby cookie shopping spree.

After Blake walked back toward the front of the store, Weiss also headed back out to the main floor. Apparently, the cranberry sauce wasn't with the cold foods, so Weiss could probably have been wandering around for hours without finding it. While slightly disappointed she could no longer claim she'd completed her quest entirely by herself, at least she wouldn't look like an idiot and waste time for no reason anymore.

She meandered past the side aisles, reading off the signs that displayed the products in each row.

Jams! That must be it, right?

A couple minutes later, she was walking toward the front of the store, goat cheese, olive oil, and cranberry sauce piled in her hands. She felt goofy carrying things like this, but the satisfaction that she was able to find everything far outweighed that awkwardness.

Perhaps it was silly of her to be so proud of such a menial accomplishment, but it was something she'd never done and never expected to have to do. It wasn't even a skill she really _needed_-she could more than afford to just go out to eat or order delivery if she wasn't eating in the cafeteria. But there was something reassuring in knowing that she'd gotten food herself.

"Weiss!" Ruby called out immediately as she rounded a corner created by a shelf. The girl bounced over, the handle of the cart still firmly in her tiny hands. "I was just about to come get you! Look, we found the mattress covers and picked one up for you!"

"Thank you, that's very kind of you," Weiss replied as she placed her items in the cart.

The foam paddings were an off-white color, appropriately soft and squishy. The wrappings read 'twin size', which was an annoying reminder of how small her new bed was, but at least it wouldn't feel like sleeping on a rock now.

"Ready to check out?" Yang asked, gesturing towards the lanes of conveyor belts before them. From the way her lips and eyebrows were ever-so-slightly raised in an amused grin, Weiss knew that she knew that Weiss had no idea what she was supposed to do next.

"Come on," Yang said, nodding towards the checklanes. "I'll show you. Lead the way, Cap."

Ruby happily pushed the cart into one of the empty lanes, rocking on her feet as Yang began to unload items onto the conveyor belt. That was when Weiss noticed the plastic bag hidden under the mattresses, like they'd already been through the line and bought something.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing it out.

Yang glanced over. "Oh, just something Ruby nagged me-"

"NOTHING!" Ruby shouted over her sister. "It's nothing! Absolutely nothing. No need to talk about it. Let's aaaaaaaaall just move on." When Weiss opened her mouth to ask further, Ruby squealed, "Forgetaboutitthat'sanorder!"

Weiss blinked. She hadn't really cared before, but now she felt like she should. What would Ruby want to hide from her?

It was probably something immature and childish that the girl didn't want Weiss to see. Ruby liked the video games, didn't she? It was probably something like that. She glanced at Blake who shrugged and looked like she couldn't care less about what was going on. Weiss guessed she shouldn't either.

The next few minutes were filled with the obnoxious beeping noise of the cashier's scanner as Yang paid for her and Ruby's things and Blake paid for her salmon and the mattress cover she caved for. Weiss was relieved that the rest of the process just involved paying: she knew how to use a credit card, at least.

After a half hour ride in the car Weiss ordered that they'd stuffed full of their spoils and a laborious trip carrying everything from the car to the dorm kitchen (for which Weiss recruited Bob's help), the four of them stood around the island. They found that one of the shelves in the fridge and a couple of the cabinets were labeled "Team RWBY", and they set to putting everything away. Cookies, sandwich ingredients, strawberries, cereals (Weiss' bran cereal and Ruby's Admiral Munch, which just looked like glorified sugar cubes), sockeye salmon, and Weiss' pieces for the crostinis all fit quite snugly in the space they were given.

It looked like the only other team that had any food stored here so far was Team CRDL's horrendous chips. The fridge shelves and cabinets for Team JNPR and Team KORL were empty.

CRDL's mess from last night was still there, Weiss noted with disdain. Animals.

Ruby grabbed the bags with the extra school supplies they'd bought and the mystery bag and dashed into their room to put them up, leaving petals drifting in the invisible currents from the air conditioning.

Weiss' scroll buzzed, and she hastily pulled it out to happily find a message from Winter.

**Apologies for the delayed response, I was training some new recruits. I'm doing quite well, thank you for asking. Preparing to go out for a field mission in a couple of days. How are you?**

Weiss smiled at the idea of Winter training others. Her sister was a hardass on _her_, she could only imagine how demanding she was with strangers.

The nagging worry for Winter's safety that she'd felt earlier came back when she read that Winter would be going out on another mission, though. The thought of what happened to Ruby's mother happening to Winter… What if in a few days Weiss messaged her sister and never got a response back?

**Please be careful out there, Winter.**

She regretted typing the words as soon as she hit send. Winter was _always _careful, as was she insanely powerful and capable. And she was far too smart and familiar with Weiss to not think something was strange from the request.

Sure enough, Winter's response said as much.

**You know I always am, little sister. What makes you say that?**

Damn. What was she supposed to say? That the thought of losing her sister, her only real family and the one person that Weiss definitively loved and loved her, her mentor and lifeline, terrified her beyond belief? No. Winter would tell her that there was no plausible reason to have such fears, that she should get a grip on her emotions and focus on getting ready for the school year.

She'd keep it simple. Fib a little.

**Oh, nothing. Some of us were just discussing how dangerous it can be out there, and it made me realize how often you're in dangerous situations. I apologize. I never meant to imply a lack of confidence in your abilities.**

That was pretty much all true. When she and Ruby had talked about Ruby's mom, they were _basically_ talking about how dangerous the wilds outside the kingdoms were. And the rest was entirely true.

She walked back to their room and sat down at her desk, flipping open a textbook to do some reviewing while she waited for her sister's reply.

It only took a couple minutes for her scroll to buzz again.

**I never thought you did, Weiss. And please do not worry about me. Not only am I me, I also go out backed with Atlesian military firepower, soldiers, and other huntsmen. I am very safe. But you never told me how you are.**

That was true. Weiss supposed her shopping trip might make for an amusing anecdote for her sister.

**I am quite well. I played the violin this morning. We just came back from doing some grocery shopping for the dorm kitchen.**

**Oh? And how was that?**

Weiss smiled. They'd both grown up in the same house. She imagined Winter had faced the same sort of perplexities when she went on her first shopping trip.

**Did you feel… lost your first time shopping for food?**

If she closed her eyes she could see Winter's amused half smile. It was a smile that she'd been the cause of a lot when she was a child, and one she was always proud when she made it reappear nowadays.

**Indeed I did. Luckily, my teammates were gracious enough to help me out. Were yours?**

**Surprisingly, yes. They found it deranged that I'd never shopped for food before, but they still helped me find things and check out.**

**Why is that surprising?**

Oh. Damn it. There was Winter again, picking up on the tiniest things Weiss said.

**It's just that Yang doesn't like me very much, and Blake is very hard to read. They both think I'm a snob, though I suppose I can't blame them. Ruby likes me, but she seems to like everybody.**

That was a pretty accurate for a synopsis, right? No need to get into how Yang seemed to despise her and her money, or how Blake seemed to have just taken pity on her. And Ruby… well, Ruby was Ruby.

Thinking about them, she realized she had no idea where her team even was. The room was empty but for her. She peeked outside and heard the Ruby and Yang's loud voices shouting from the community room.

"... op it! Yang-uh! Stop cheating!"

"I'm not cheating, you're just outclassed by my mad skills!"

"You have me in a headlock! How is that not cheating?!"

A giggle that sounded like Blake followed their bickering.

Tiptoeing down the hall to see what was going on, Weiss found them sitting in the living room, all three comfortable on the four person couch, the two sisters playing some video game that involved two characters punching each other. Or rather, it seemed like Yang's character was punching Ruby's. Ruby was, in fact, currently in a headlock. Weiss knew nothing about video games, but it was reasonable to assume playing one while your hand is in a vice between your sister's bicep and forearm was a little difficult.

She was tempted to join them, but… she hadn't been invited. Understandably. They were sharing a moment a fun and happiness as friends, something she had nothing to contribute to.

She turned and headed back to continue reviewing when her phone buzzed.

**Give it time. It's only the first day. Just make an effort to be a member of the team and it will happen. I'm glad to hear your first adventure went well.**

Winter was right. Becoming a teammate wouldn't happen in a day, especially for her. But it wouldn't happen at all if she didn't try.

**Thank you, Winter.**

She went and grabbed her book-no reason not to be productive while spending time with her team-and shuffled back over to the common area. She realized they must have cleaned up the mess left by CRDL, which she thought was a mistake, but now wasn't the time to bring it up.

Itching with a strange nervousness, she rushed over to one of the chairs beside the couch and sat down. She clutched her book to her chest and avoided making eye contact with the others, afraid they might ask her to leave if-

"Weiss!" Ruby cheered. "Do you want to play?" She held her scroll out to Weiss, who shook her head.

"No, thank you, but… may I stay here and watch?"

Yang raised an eyebrow at her but smiled, as did Blake. Ruby was more… enthusiastic.

"Of course! Do you want some strawberries?" She pointed at the bowl of bright red fruit on the coffee table between them that sat right next to a small bowl of sugar. "Oh, also, do you think you could get Yang off of me? My neck is really starting to hurt."

When the others laughed (and Yang let go of her sister), Weiss couldn't help but smile with them.

_Buzz!_

**Of course, Weiss. I hope you enjoy your last night of break. Tomorrow starts the hard work. I know you'll do great.**

Once again, Winter was right. Tomorrow was their first day of class. Weiss made a mental note to check her schedule before she went to bed and to make sure she'd pack all of the supplies she'd need in her bag.

Soon it would be time for her to become the best. Her days and nights would go back to studying and training and doing everything she could to excel, only now she'd have peers to compare against.

But for now, a few hours of relaxation with her team couldn't hurt.


	6. Seeding 1-6

**The Badge and the Burden pt 1! :O **

**Lots of parallels and bits taken from the show for this part, mainly because I actually really liked the way it was handled in the show. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!**

* * *

Ruby stirred from her dream of bashing a Grimm to death with a giant chocolate chip cookie unhappily. It was such a good dream! She was killing monsters and having a yummy snack at the same time!

'_Go back to sleep, Ruby. Go back to sleep!'_

She couldn't go back to sleep.

'_Ugh. What time is it anyway?'_

Rolling over, diluted rays of sunlight greeted her eyes through the blinds. It was so bright! Not really, but Ruby was still kind of sleepy and very grumpy that she was awake, so she felt like being dramatic.

Now where was her darn scroll? Remembering yesterday, she wiggled her foot around. Nope, not there. She rolled over and looked down at the bookshelf that sat so low she could only just barely reach the top from her bunk.

Oh hey! There it was, plugged in to charge overnight. She only now remembered having done that. The Responsible Ruby Rose.

She reached down and grabbed the scroll, flipping it open to find it was already 10:15. That made sense. They'd been up late gaming. Well, she and Yang had been gaming. Blake and Weiss had kept them company, which had been really nice. They'd both been mostly reading their books, but it felt like they were a team for real in those few hours. She, Yang, and Blake had stayed up past midnight out there. Weiss left early to go to bed, and they'd accidently woken her up when they came back to the room to sleep themselves. She'd been maaaaaaaaad.

Ruby felt bad just remembering it.

Yang and Blake were both still sleeping soundly, and Ruby felt like going back to sleep was a good idea. She leaned over the edge of her bunk to peek at Weiss.

'_Wait. Where's Weiss?'_

The girl's bed was empty, and it had been made so meticulously that Ruby wouldn't have known somebody had slept in it last night had she not seen Weiss there herself.

Had she gone out for a run again? That made the most sense. Although hadn't she done that at, like, seven in the morning? Weiss struck Ruby as a creature of habit, so unless she'd been running for over three hours, there had to be another explanation.

Maybe she'd gone to breakfast? Or maybe she'd gone to cl-

CLASS!

She tumbled to the ground with a squeak. "Yang! Yang wake up! Blake!" She rushed over and shook Blake's shoulder. "Blake, we gotta go to class!"

Blake groggily rolled over, mumbling through her sleepiness, "No, it's okay. I just hit snooze on my alarm."

What? Wait a minute…

"What time did you set your alarm for?"

Blake's pretty amber eyes blinked open slowly. "Nine?"

"Blake, it's ten fifteen!"

That was a caffeine shot straight to Blake's veins. "Oh crap." She jumped out of bed, smacking her head on the bottom of Yang's bunk with a hiss of pain as Yang slowly pushed herself up.

"Wuzgoin on?"

"We're late for class!" Ruby screeched as she ran into the bathroom to find something to change into.

Shirt! Pants! Boots! Cloak!

She dashed back out to see Yang and Blake both stumbling out of their bathroom, clothed and pulling on shoes and sandals of their own.

"Let's go!" Ruby streaked to the door.

"Wait, where?!" Yang shouted before Ruby could semblance away.

'_Crap.'_ Ruby had no idea where their class was, or even which class they were going to.

Blake saved the day, dashing over to her desk. "Here! The schedule!"

The two sisters crowded around her as she figured out where they were going. "Introduction to Dust Theory, Professor Goodwitch, Building A, room 101."

"To Building A!" Ruby shouted. They'd figure out where Building A was on the way.

"Wait, where's Weiss?" Blake asked as they ran through the hall.

"I have no idea!" Ruby shouted over her shoulder.

Yang's voice came out as a growl. "I bet that pompous jerk went to class without waking us up."

That didn't sound right, though, did it? That would be kind of… inconsiderate? Although… waking them up wasn't really her responsibility, was it? But that's what a good teammate would do…

It took them what felt like an incredibly long five minutes to find building A-Ruby was pretty sure the sun set at least four times while they were looking. Luckily, room 101 was the first door in the building.

"Ruby, wait!" Yang shouted right before Ruby sprinted into the classroom.

'_Uh-oh.' _

It seemed to be a hybrid classroom/lab setup thing. In the front of the room was a whiteboard and projector system, and four large, curved tables with four seats each for the four freshman teams. In the back were four separate lab stations, complete with doodads and gizmos that looked very expensive and _very_ breakable.

Professor Goodwitch, the grumpy blonde huntress that had saved Ruby on the rooftop weeks ago (not really though, Ruby had totally had that situation under control) looked like she'd been giving a lecture before she abandoned her life calling of teaching in exchange for glaring daggers into Ruby.

"Miss Rose. How nice of you to join us. I hope the rest of your team is with you? Miss Schnee would still look out of place if she only had _one_ teammate sitting with her."

Ruby looked over and found Weiss sitting alone at one of the two front tables, notebook and pen and textbook in front of her (crap, Ruby had forgotten to bring her supplies), head down and pinching the bridge of her nose and just looking really, really frustrated in general.

Yang and Blake slowly tiptoed into the room. "Heh. Uhhh, hiya Teach," Yang said nervously. "Funny sto-"

"Sit down," Professor Goodwitch commanded sternly.

The three of them rushed to their seats next to Weiss, and as they did, the professor continued, "And you will address me as 'Professor' in this classroom or you'll be doing it in detention. Your choice."

Yang gave a very forced, very nervous smile and whispered "sorry" so quietly it probably seemed to anyone not sitting next to her like she was just mouthing the words.

"Now, since you _children_ missed the first part of your first ever lesson at this highly prestigious academy-" she gave them a pointed glare "-I'm curious if one of you would be able to name the different kinds of Dust that we were just discussing. Miss Rose, why don't you take the _lead._"

There seemed to be a pointed barb there at the end, though Ruby wasn't… quite sure wh-_ooooh_, 'cause she's team leader. Right. By her side, Weiss still had her eyes closed and was still pinching the bridge of her nose, taking really long, deep, angry breaths.

"Oh, um, of course! There's red Dust and blue an-"

"Don't just give me the colors, give me the elements they correspond to. This is a huntsman academy, not a coloring book seminar."

Coloring book seminar? Were those a thing? What would they have to talk about other than 'color inside the lines'? Although that _was _pretty hard…

"Um… ahem, yes." She started over, aware that every eye in room (except for Weiss') was on her. Nothing to be nervous about, though. Everything was juuuuuuust fine.

"Red is fire. Bl-dark blue is water. Light blue is ice. Yellow is lightning…" Jeez, was it hot in here or what? It was probably from all the eyes on her. It was a commonly known fact that too many people looking at one person can set that person on fire. This would be a lot easier if they'd all just look away-and maybe _go_ away while they were at it…

"Is that it?" the professor asked, clearly unimpressed.

"No! No. Dark green is earth, light green is wind. Purple is gravity. Orange is lava-or molten, I guess. Um… Oh, there's white Dust, which is light, but doesn't do all the much…" That was it, right? "Oh! And there's hard-light dust! Which is not actual dust, it's a liquid byproduct of the white dust creation process." She puffed up her chest proudly at dropping that knowledge bomb, and felt really proud of herself for remembering what Weiss had said.

Weiss, as it happened, opened her eyes to look at her then, her curious expression saying something along the lines of "Huh, you were actually listening."

Professor Goodwitch nodded. "Very good." Ruby beamed. "And it seems Miss Schnee has already begun sharing some of her knowledge with her team."

Ruby blinked. What made her assume Ruby hadn't known that herself?

"She said the exact same words ten minutes ago. When she was in class. _On time._"

Ruby deflated.

From behind her and on the opposite side of the room, Cardin and that dumb gross mohawk boy sniggered at her. '_Shut up, dummies.'_ From the table in front of Team CRDL, Pyrrha gave her a reassuring smile and a thumbs up under the table.

That made her feel better.

"Now, back to where we were at," the professor said, moving back behind her standing-desk-for-speeches thing. What was it called? Pendulum? Possum? Podium! That was it. "Who here is familiar with the concept of Aura harmonizing?"

Weiss raised her hand, as did Pyrrha, though more hesitantly.

Professor Goodwitch nodded like she'd expected that. "Anyone _other_ than Miss Nikos and Miss Schnee?"

The room was still.

The professor exhaled heavily. "Miss Nikos, would you like to explain it to the class?"

"Oh…" Pyrrha said quietly. "I'm sure Weiss would explain it better. I can try, though?" For a world famous champion, she seemed really shy. And modest.

Ruby liked her!

"Go ahead and explain what you can. We can consult Miss Schnee's expertise after."

The words seemed to make Weiss float. All of a sudden she went from looking frustrated and tense to positively glowing with pride. How did she keep her back so straight? It made her look, like, ten feet taller than she actually was. Well, that and her heels, though those didn't matter right now 'cause she was sitting down.

"Well… After being around a particular Dust crystal for long enough, a huntsman or huntress' Aura will attune to it. Once it's attuned, only that huntsman or huntress can activate the crystal with their Aura. It won't work for anyone else."

There was a long silence as the professor waited for elaboration. When none was forthcoming, she clapped her hands once. "Yes! That is a very succinct and basic way to put it, and most of the important bits you need to remember for application outside the classroom. Miss Schnee," she turned to Weiss, whose chin somehow rose even higher in response. "Could you provide more information?"

Weiss gave a short nod. "The Principle of Dust Harmonization is the unexplained property Dust has in which it will attune to the Aura of anyone whose Aura has been unlocked-not just huntsman and huntresses-if exposed to them for a period of time. The amount of time it takes for the attunement to take place varies on several factors, the most prevalent being the size of the crystal, the strength of the person's Aura, and the person's affinity for that Dust type. The advantages of this phenomenon are as Pyrrha said-other people can't activate Dust you've attuned to. So if you're in a fight and someone steals your weapon, they won't be able to use the Dust against you. And if they hit a Dust vial or round that you have on your person with an Aura infused attack, it won't explode on you. It also gives you greater control over how exactly the element of the Dust acts once you activate a crystal, giving you greater finesse with your Dust casting. There are some disadvantages too, like you can't share Dust rounds and your teammates can't use your weapon as effectively if they end up with it in a fight."

Professor Goodwitch opened her mouth to say something then, but Weiss didn't notice and kept on going.

"It also makes the manufacturing of Dust more difficult, as the people involved in the process must _all _be unawakened. From mining, to refining, to mixing, to packing, nobody can have their Aura unlocked or you run the risk of shipping out useless Dust, as once Dust is harmonized with someone it cannot be unattuned from that individual."

Towards the end, Ruby noticed Cardin mocking Weiss, his hands folded in front of him and his nose up in the air as he pretended to talk.

Professor Goodwitch noticed too. "Would you like to repeat all of that back to me this Saturday at detention, Mister Winchester? No?" She turned back to Weiss.

"Thank you, Miss Schnee. That was very apt and informative."

Weiss smiled, a small, controlled smile that didn't show any teeth. It was obvious she was pleased, though, because her sky blue eyes were dancing.

Professor Goodwitch walked out from behind her pendulum-podium!-and Ruby noticed that she was holding a tiny crystal of pale green Dust in her hand.

"It's also important to note how the harmonizing actually takes place," she said, eyes moving between the students before her. "I've had this crystal on the podium for the past twenty five minutes, and it has now become fully attuned to me just from my proximity." She held it between her index finger and thumb and pinched it. It shattered with a whoosh of air that lifted papers off the desk and sent students-the ones that had actually brought stuff to take notes on-scrambling to keep everything down.

"Now passive attunement like that will take longer for you students because your Auras won't be as potent. You can also speed up the process by making physical contact with a crystal and _gently_ pushing some of your Aura into it. Be careful not to set it off unintentionally. If you are still having to actively concentrate on projecting your Aura, which I assume all of you are past that point, then you won't be able to passively attune."

She walked back to her _podium_. "You can also prevent or, at the very least, extremely delay, harmonization by suppressing your Aura, though as you're likely aware you should never be doing such a thing while out in the field. Now…"

Ruby started to tune out much of what the professor was saying. Not that it wasn't interesting! Dust was super cool and let people do all kinds of crazy awesome pseudo-magic. But the lecture was so borrrrrring, and Ruby had never really been good with Dust casting anyway. And that was okay! Crescent Rose and her semblance were more than enough to take on the stupid evil Grimm monsters anyway!

As the minutes ticked by, Ruby really wished she'd brought her notebook with her so she could doodle. Classes were so much more fun when she was able to continue drawing the saga of the great Penguins Versus Aliens war! But alas, here she was. Bored.

She rested her cheek on her palm and suppressed a yawn, and luckily Professor Goodwitch didn't notice.

But Weiss did.

Ruby's partner kicked her foot under the table and gave Ruby a super-mega death glare. Seriously. If Ruby didn't already know it was glyphs of nonsensical, over-the-top power, she would have thought that killer glare was Weiss' semblance.

Ruby straightened up and tried her best to pay attention.

"... when you go to your Huntsman Combat class with Professor Rustheart-"

"Wait, what?" Weiss interrupted the professor.

Yeah, that's right. Weiss. Interrupted a professor.

Ruby perked up. Things were getting interesting.

"As in _Nidas_ Rustheart?" Weiss continued, shock painted in heavy strokes on her face.

Wait… That name sounded familiar…

"From Team NOBL?" Pyrrha asked.

Professor Goodwitch looked like she'd just died inside. "Yes. And yes."

"Wait," Yang contributed to the class for the first time in forever. "The Hero of Molvane is our _professor_?"

"OH!" _That's_ why it sounded familiar! She played as Nidas, Hero of Molvane in Huntsman Royale II all the time!

Whoa. One of her professors is so famous and awesome he's in a video game. How freaking awesome was that?!

"I based my weapon off of his," breathed a girl behind her-Ruby was pretty sure her name was Ophelia or something with an O. She was the O in team KORL.

"But wait," Pyrrha added, her eyebrows furrowed. "Didn't he graduate from Beacon, like, four years ago?"

"Yes!" Professor Goodwitch threw her hands up in the air. "He's so young _I _was his professor, but now he's the cool teacher that everyone's excited about." She seemed pretty bitter about that.

Yang laughed. "Well yeah! Are you in Huntsman Royale Two?"

The professor looked toward the back of the classroom. "This is your fault," she griped, crossing her arms.

Ruby turned around-_holy crap_, Professor Ozpin was here! When the heck did he come in? He was leaning against the nearest lab table, one hand on his cane, chuckling.

He slowly righted himself and walked toward the front of the class. "Yes, yes. Your new professor is very famous and… cool. You should still treat him with the respect due to his station at this academy, and it would be best to nip this conversation in the bud until _after_ class is over."

"Didn't he kill a bunch of people?" Nora blurted out.

"What? No!" Weiss cried indignantly. "He incapacitated the bandits that attacked Molvane. He didn't _kill _anyone."

"No, he definitely killed some of them," Ozpin corrected.

All sixteen pairs of student's eyes went wide as they stared at him.

Ozpin sighed. "It was an incredibly chaotic situation and he wasn't able to exercise proper restraint with so many people in danger, including himself. His semblance is also very prone to delivering lethal blows if he isn't very careful."

"Yeah, for real," Yang huffed.

If the video game was correct, Nidas'-or rather, Professor Rustheart's-semblance was building up energy from hitting enemies and then releasing it in powerful kinetic blasts, either from himself or his weapon, which was a pair of scimitars whose hilts clicked together to form a hard-light longbow.

Ruby and Yang always fought over who got to play him 'cause he was _really freaking cool._

Professor Ozpin continued talking. "He has also made every effort both until and since then to make sure he wouldn't harm anyone so badly that they died." He looked around pointedly.

"Got it!" Ruby chirped. "Noooooo killing people."

Ozpin gave a single, quick nod of confirmation. "Good. Now I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that you all are far too distracted to retain any more information today about Dust theory…" He trailed off and looked to Professor Goodwitch, who sighed heavily and nodded. "Yes. Why don't we call that the end of class, today?"

Everyone excitedly got up, those that had supplies hastily stuffing them in their bags-except for Weiss, she was still slow and poised and princessy about it. "Don't forget about your afternoon class with Professor Port! And make sure you're _on time_." He looked at Ruby.

"Heh, yeah, you got it," she said weakly, scratching the back of her head before dashing out into the hallway and bouncing on her toes while she waited for her team. She gave friendly nods to everyone as they passed (even Team CRDL, who just laughed at her for some reason).

"Still got a little bit of bed head there Ruby," Pyrrha whispered with a smile as she passed.

"I think it's cute!" Nora practically yelled. It seemed like Nora just yelled everything she said. Ruby could respect that. If it's not worth saying loud, is it worth saying at all?

"See you guys this afternoon," Jaune told her with a small wave.

"You too!" Ruby replied with a goofy salute. It… felt right in the moment.

"Ruby!" Yang shouted, bursting out of the class, throwing her into a headlock, and tusseling her already terrible hair. "Freakin' _Nidas_ is our fighting instructor!"

Why Yang needed to put her in a headlock to say that, Ruby wasn't sure. She was, like, forty-five percent sure it was unnecessary. Yang was always right about everything though, so she decided to let it go.

"I know! This place is awesome!"

"Hold on," Blake said, stopping. "Who is this guy?"

"Only the second coolest huntsman ever!" Yang threw her arms in the air as she yelled it, thankfully letting Ruby go so she didn't have to walk with a bent back anymore. She rubbed her neck to get the knot out of it.

"Who's the first?" Weiss asked.

"Our uncle Qrow," Ruby and Yang replied in unison.

Weiss narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips in doubt.

"Anyway," Yang said, turning back to Blake, "there's a village to the east of Vale on the other side of the mountains named Molvane. One day a giant bandit tribe tried to attack them, and Nidas-"

"Professor Rustheart," Weiss interjected.

Yang waved her hand. "Whatever. Professor _Awesome _was there turning in a mission for his team for a Grimm hunt. He freaking destroyed the entire tribe all by himself, and they'd even had some rogue huntsmen with them. So he's, like… awesome. And he's our favorite character to play in Huntsman Royale Two!"

Ruby nodded excitedly in confirmation.

Blake nodded slowly at the story. "I see. Sounds like he knows how to fight."

"Heck yeah, he does!"

Ruby and Yang spent the next couple of minutes blabbering about his moveset in the video game. Blake seemed to be politely tuning them out until they mentioned his semblance.

"How exactly does it work?" she said, an inexplicable look of concern on her face.

"He charges up from hitting bad guys!" Ruby explained again. "Then he can release the energy in big shockblast things that look awesome and do tons of damage!"

Blake paled and frowned, looking down at the ground.

"What's wrong?" Yang asked.

"N-nothing. I just… know someone with a similar semblance."

Yang grinned. "Is it me? It's basically my semblance but he needs to land hits instead of taking them. And… And he can use it on his weapons, I guess. But mines cooler 'cause my hair catches on fire!"

Ruby reached up and patted her sister's shoulder. "Yes, yes. You're much cooler than the guy that saved an entire village by himself and got put in a video game and is world famous."

Yang turned and glared at her. "Is that sarcasm I'm detecting, dearest sister?" The words had an edge to them that suggested if she gave the wrong answer she was going to suffer from death by tickle.

"Not at all!" she squeaked. "You're the coolest ever!"

It was kinda true though. Uncle Qrow was awesome. Dad was awesome. Nidas was pretty sweet. But when it came down to it, Yang was the best.

Yang nodded, satisfied with her answer.

'_Phew. Safe… for now.'_

"I suppose the person I'm thinking of kind of has a mix between your semblance and Professor Awesome's," Blake told Yang.

"Neat!" There was a brief moment of silence before Yang stopped suddenly in her tracks. "Wait." She jabbed a finger at Weiss, and her eyes started shifting towards the dark purple that meant red was close at hand. "Why didn't you wake us up?!"

Weiss seemed confused and insulted. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me! We're your teammates and you didn't even bother waking us up when you left for class!"

Weiss scowled and clenched her tiny little princess hands into fists. "First of all, it's not _my_ responsibility to make sure you wake up for your _first class_ ever in this school. It's not my responsibility to wake you up _ever._" Yang started to shoot something back at her, but she kept going. "And second, I got to class over an hour early because I was already up. I didn't think I'd need to be around to be a living alarm clock for you idiots!"

Ruby pouted. "Hey, that's not nice."

"Is there another word to describe someone that doesn't bother to set an alarm before their first day of classes in an academy they've been granted a scholarship to?"

Ruby stayed silent. No, she didn't really have another word for it. That was really dumb of her, and she really hoped Professor Ozpin wasn't considering revoking her invitation to Beacon. Still, it wasn't nice to say….

"Why were you already awake so early?" Yang asked, clearly confused why someone wouldn't want to sleep in as long as possible.

"What does it matter?" Weiss spat, crossing her arms across her chest defensively.

"Did you go for a run again?" Ruby asked.

Weiss' eyes went wide for a brief moment before she nodded.

"Violin?"

She nodded again.

Well, Ruby had been right. Weiss was a creature of habit. That was good to know.

Yang seemed to defuse a bit, her eyes sliding back towards lilac. "Well, you could have called when we weren't there on time."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I was actually paying attention to the _class_. And I'm not your mother, Yang."

Yang huffed and started walking away. "No, our mom was a _way_ better person than you."

Weiss blinked in shock. Her expression started to flicker between anger and sadness, and she turned to stalk off in the other direction.

"Weiss, wait-"

"Leave me alone, Ruby," she sighed, not turning to look at Ruby as she said it.

She was going to follow after Weiss anyway to try to make sure she was okay (that's what partners were for, right?), but Blake grabbed her arm and shook her head.

"Let her be alone right now, Ruby."

That made no sense to Ruby. Weiss was sad and the whole point of having friends was so they could pick you up when you're down. But Ruby didn't really understand Weiss all that well. Maybe she was different. Maybe Blake was right.

The scary possibility that Weiss didn't even consider Ruby to be her friend also occurred to her. But no way, right? They were teammates and partners! And they'd shared some nice moments together over the past couple of days, like their lunch in the cafeteria the other day, and hanging out on the roof, and chilling in the living room last night… Surely Weiss had warmed up to her by now, right?

Maybe not. She _was_ the Ice Queen, after all.

She followed Yang and Blake outside, wishing more than anything that her partner would come around.

"Well, guess we got some time to kill," Yang pointed out. "When's the afternoon class?"

Blake pulled out the paper with their schedule printed on it-the only paper they'd brought to class between the three of them. "Two PM. Building A, room two-oh-four."

"Oh nice, same spot," Ruby said.

"So who wants lunch and air hockey? _You_ still owe me a rematch." Yang jabbed her accusatory finger at Blake.

The girl frowned back. "Why do I _owe _you a rematch?"

"Because you beat me!" Yang said simply, shrugging like that was an obvious answer.

"Just because you lost doesn't mean it was a fluke, Yang."

Yang scoffed. "What do you mean? Of _course_ it does!"

Ruby smiled at the good-natured bickering. She didn't know what she was supposed to do about Weiss, but these two were a ton of fun to be around.

* * *

"Room two-oh-four!" Yang read off happily. "Shall we, ladies?"

Ruby nodded excitedly. Second class at Beacon, and she wasn't late this time! In fact, she was ten minutes early! And she'd brought her stuff, too. So now she could take notes. And doodle. But mostly make notes…

With some doodles.

This room was very different from Professor Goodwitch's. There was still the board and projector up front, but instead of tables for each team there were just rows of desks in a semicircle that rose higher the further back they went.

Weiss was already there, sitting in the front row in front of Team JNPR, while the other two teams seemed to be trickling in still.

"Weiss!" She skipped over and plopped down in a chair next to her, Yang and Blake following behind her. "How are you?" They hadn't seen their prettiest teammate since she'd walked off hours ago.

"I'm fine," was Weiss' terse response.

Ruby waited for Weiss to ask "how are you" back, but after a long, awkward silence it seemed like she wasn't planning to ask.

Well, Ruby would just have to tell her anyway! "We're pretty good, too! We went back to the rec room. Blake beat Yang in air hockey again, so then me and Yang two v oned her but we still only just _barely _won and-"

"Yang and I," Weiss said.

"Hm?"

Weiss shook her head tightly. "Nothing, nevermind."

Before Ruby could get into the peg-each-other-with-ping-pong-balls-as-hard-as-you-can competition she and Yang had had (Yang won, obviously, but it was still tons of fun), she heard Nora speak-yell from behind her.

"Yang!"

Yang leaned her head back until she was looking up at Nora upside down. "Sup?"

"Arm wrestle me!"

"Nora…" Ren sighed while Ruby giggled. This would be awesome.

Yang hopped up excitedly. "Oh, you're on, Sparky."

When they started, Ruby was surprised to find out that Nora was even more of a trash-talker than Yang was.

"Come on, blondie. You-*_huff_*-push like a girl!"

"Yeah? Well, you push like… a short person!"

Ruby pouted. "As a short girl, I'm offended by all of this."

Pyrrha giggled at that, and Ruby gave her a big grin. Making people laugh was awesome.

Nora huffed out some quick, deep breaths. "I can tell… all you have to practice against… is Ruby. Weakling!"

"Hey!"

It didn't matter, though. Yang was starting to win! Nora's arm was starting to move backwards.

"Get her, Yang! Fight for the dignity of girls and short people!"

"Wasn't Yang the one that used short as an insult?" Jaune asked.

"ShutupJauneyou'renothelping!"

While she cheered on Yang and Jaune cheered on Nora, with Blake, Ren, and Pyrrha all looking on with amusement, Weiss sat with her head in her hands.

"Weiss! You need to cheer on Yang! Give her your energy!"

Weiss just placed her forehead on the desk and mumbled something to herself.

Whatever. If she wanted to be a party pooper, Ruby wouldn't force her to join.

Yang was winning even harder now. Well, of course she was. Yang was the best and strongest person ever. But now Nora was sweating and struggling, and she'd stopped her endless stream of play insults to focus on the arm wrestle.

"What's the matter, Nora? You seem to be slipping there."

"Shut up, blondie! You ain't sh-"  
"Ahem!"

They all turned around at the interruption.

A very big, very round, mustached man in a suit was standing behind them, eyebrows raised.

"Professor… Port?" Ruby asked.

"Indeed, young lady!" he announced grandly.

He didn't really seem like much of a professor…

"Would one of you ladies like to test your strength against a true, powerful huntsman?" he asked, placing his elbow down on the table in front of Yang, who'd abandoned her battle with Nora.

Everybody blinked at the man, uncomfortably confused.

"Um… no thank you?" Yang replied.

"Oh." Portly Dude straightened up. "Yes, I suppose that would be… unprofessional. Well!" He clapped his hands and walked to the front of the classroom. "Welcome, everyone, to Grimm Studies One, where you will learn the anatomy, behaviour, and optimal combat tactics of the Grimm! Monsters, demons, prowlers of the night. Yes, the creatures of Grimm have many names, but I simply refer to them as prey!"

He pumped a fist across his chest liked he'd made a joke, pausing for a laugh or something. Ruby looked over at Yang with a "What the heck" face, and Yang shrugged back at her.

"Can anyone name the three most common Grimm you will encounter?"

Weiss' hand shot up.

Ruby knew this! She raised her hand too,

Professor Port pointed to her. "Yes, Miss… Rose, was it?"

Ruby nodded. "It's Beowolves, Ursa, and… uh…" Crap. What was the third one? Noooooo! Now Weiss would think she's even dumber. Think, Ruby Rose! Think! "Nevermores?"

"Ooh, no!" Professor Port chuckled. "Two for three. Miss, uh… Schnee! Could you name the last one?"

"Boarbatusks, sir." Weiss gave Ruby a face that _screamed _"Duh."

'_Darn it.'_

"Precisely! Those three will be what we focus on for the next couple of months, followed by the bigger, rarer threats like Death Stalkers, Nevermores, Weavers, Geists, Beringels, and so on. We'll end the course talking about some of the Grimm Titans, such as the Sea Feilongs, Leviathans, and Wyverns, though we'll save most of the studying about those for later.

"But first, a story! A story about a young, handsome huntsman… Me!"

'_Oh boy.'_

Ruby immediately starting tuning the man out, and she didn't feel at all bad about it this time. She started her doodling, beginning, as always, with the great penguin General Flappy Feet, armed with his giant scythe/rifle, Crescent Snow. He was embroiled in a close battle with Admiral Zymdood of the Alien Armada, who used a giant laser gun that turned into a big club.

Once she got tired of the epic saga of Penguins Versus Aliens (which took a long time 'cause it was a gripping tale), she decided to doodle Professor Portly Dude. It was pretty easy. It was basically just a big circle, with another circle on top for a head and stick legs and arms. She drew in the buttons on his coat and stuff and showed Yang, making her giggle. Behind her, Nora started snickering too.

When she showed Weiss, though… Well, Weiss didn't seem to like it very much. She gave Ruby another one of those death glares before rolling her eyes and looking back at the Professor.

But it was a cute picture…

"I do, sir!" Weiss suddenly shouted, raising her hand.

Oh. What had Portly Dude been saying?

"Well, let's find out! Come forward and face your opponent!"

Opponent? What oppo-her gaze shifted over a few feet to the left. What the heck?! When had that giant cage gotten there?! How had she not noticed that before?

Weiss stood from her seat and confidently and strode out to the open space at the front of the room, drawing her skinny, pointy sword as she did. She lined up in front of the cage, adopting that same stance she had in the forest-sword held in front of her, shoulders back, head super straight, feet at right angles from each other.

Was there a freaking _Grimm_ in that cage? Was that a thing in this school? Just keeping Grimm around?

That's so awesome!

What would it be? It seemed like a Beowolf could fit in there. Might be a little small for an Ursa.

"Let's go Weiss, beat up whatever it is!" Yang called out.

"Fight well!" cheered Blake.

Dang, this was happening! She was about to fight a Grimm in front of everybody! "Yeah!" she called out. "Represent Teeeeeam RWBY!"

Weiss looked over at her. "Ruby! I'm trying to focus!"

"Oh, sorry." What had she done wrong? She'd just been trying to encourage her partner. Yang and Blake had done the same!

Ruby noticed Weiss' form had dropped, her shoulder bunching up and her free hand clenched into a fist.

Professor Port walked over to the cage and pulled the latch. With a loud clang, the door fell down revealing… Oh, of _course_ it was a boarbatusk.

The thing's creepy red eyes locked onto the princess standing in front of it and it charged.

Weiss nimbly dodged to the side as hoofbeats clopped past her, slashing out at the monster's side as she spun away from it. It didn't do much damage 'cause the hide and bony plating on the creature gave it a lot of armor on its back. Also, Weiss' sword was way more of a stabby sword than a slashy sword.

But Weiss knew that, right?

"You got this, Weiss! Show it who's boss!" she called out. Weiss just seemed off balance right now. But if she knew her team was rooting for her, then she could relax, right?

Weiss kind of huffed to herself when Ruby cheered her on. A glyph appeared underneath her feet and she launched herself at the Boarbatusk, looking like she was about to skewer its face. Ruby held her breath, ready to see it happen 'cause that would be _awesome_!

It didn't work, though. The plating on the Boarbatusk caused the point of Weiss' sword to bounce off, and she ended up getting locked in its giant, curving horns. After a brief tug-of-war over the sword, it flew behind the Grimm and out of Weiss' hands as she was knocked onto her back, her light blue Aura flashing as it protected her from harm.

"Oho!" Professor Port called out. "What are you going to do now without your weapon?"

Something was really wrong. Weiss was way better than this.

The monster charged, and Ruby was about to pull out Crescent Rose to make sure Weiss didn't get hurt when the girl rolled to the side and summoned a white glyph in the creature's flank, sending it spinning into the front row of desks and disorienting it.

She quickly walked towards her sword, summoning a glyph underneath it that launched it towards her. She caught it and turned back to her opponent in one smooth motion.

Dang, she was pretty cool.

She also wasn't doing too well. Maybe Ruby should give her some advice to help her get her bearings again?

"Weiss! Go for it's belly! There's no arm-"

"Stop telling me what to do!" Weiss shouted at her, blue sparks flying from her sword like she wasn't controlling her Aura and had set off the Dust in the weapon's cylinder.

Oh. That's what was going on. Weiss was angry… at Ruby.

But what had Ruby done? She'd only been trying to help and encourage her partner. She hadn't gotten mad at her for not waking them up this morning. She knew it had been her own mistake. She had respected Weiss' need for space and privacy, even though she had wanted to go after her.

What had she done wrong?

With these questions eating her up, she almost didn't even notice when the Boarbatusk started up one of the species' signature rolling charges at Weiss, straight into a white glyph she summoned that knocked it onto its back. With a quick backflip onto a black glyph in the air behind her, Weiss launched herself at the grounded enemy, running her sword through its underside.

The thing disintegrated into black dust while Professor Port clapped. "Bravo! It appears we are indeed in the presence of a true huntress-in-training!"

Ruby frowned. '_Well, duh. Isn't that what we all are? Except for the boys, of course. They're huntsmen-in-training. (And gross.)'_

"That's all the time we have for today. Be sure to cover the assigned readings. And stay vigilant!"

Ruby didn't really know what that meant, but she also didn't really care. She watched as Weiss stormed out of the room, feeling guilty but not still not sure what she'd done wrong.

And Weiss had forgotten her bag!

"Sheesh, what's with her?" Jaune muttered behind her.

Ruby didn't know, but she was going to find out.

Quickly stuffing her notebook in her bag and-more carefully-putting Weiss' textbook and notebook in the bag next to her, she grabbed both and raced out into the hall after her partner. She briefly caught a glimpse of Weiss' ponytail swishing around the corner.

"Weiss!" she yelled after her, rounding the corner.

"_What_?" Weiss snapped back, pivoting on one of her crazy tall heels to wheel on Ruby.

"What's wrong with you?" Wait, crap. She hadn't meant to say that. She just meant to ask 'What's wrong?'. Why had she added that last part? She tried to fix her flub. "Why are you being s-"

"What's wrong with _me_?" Weiss repeated incredulously. "What's wrong with _you_?"

"But… what did I do?" She still didn't understand. She was just trying to be encouraging and respectful of her teammate. She thought she'd managed that pretty well today.

"That's just it!" Weiss cried, her frustration clearly boiling over. "You haven't done _anything _to earn your position as leader! You've acted like a _child _the entire time you've been here! You were immature and impulsive out in the forest, you stayed up playing games instead of getting ready for your first day of classes, you were _late _to class, and you haven't paid one _bit _of attention in either class at all!"

That wasn't true! She'd payed attention to a lot of the Dust stuff. Kinda…

"Weiss, where is this coming from? What happened to all that talk about working together? I thought you believed in acting as a team." Ruby knew she'd made mistakes today, but weren't teammates supposed to _help_ each other when they messed up?

"Not a team lead by you," she cut back. "We're here to learn. And you're supposed to _lead_. And you clearly have no desire or drive to do either of those things. _I_ do. _I've _studied. _I've_ trained. And frankly, I deserve better. I _am_ better." She turned away, crossing her arms.

Ruby reached out to try to stop her from leaving. She could fix this! She could say something that would make Weiss feel better. Right now it sounded like she wanted to quit the team, and Ruby couldn't imagine anything worse.

"Ozpin made a mistake," Weiss stated while Ruby hand was still floating in limbo between them.

That made Ruby's hand fall back to her side. Her shoulders slumped. Her head hung. Weiss walked away, and this time Ruby didn't try to stop her.

She was right. Ruby hadn't done anything to earn her position as leader. She'd barely even earned a place in the school at all! She'd never had amazing grades, she wasn't the _best _fighter, she couldn't Dust cast very well, she was an amateur weaponsmith at best… And Weiss was awesome at pretty much everything she did.

What right did Ruby have to be her leader?

"Well that didn't seem to go very well," said a now-familiar voice behind her.

She turned to find Professor Ozpin looking down at her with kind eyes, his cane, and a cup of coffee.

"Is she right?" Ruby asked him. "Did you make a mistake?"

Professor Ozpin chuckled lightly. "That remains to be seen."

"What do you mean?" Did that mean there was a chance he _was_ wrong? Should Ruby, like, step down as leader? Was that a thing?

"I mean it's only been one day," the headmaster explained. He sighed and looked after Weiss before turning back to Ruby. "Ruby, I've made more mistakes than any man, woman, and child on this planet. But at this moment I would not consider your appointment to leader of Team RWBY as one of them." He leaned forward, meeting her gaze with level, knowing eyes. "Do you?"

It was encouraging that he thought she was doing okay, but… "But Weiss is right. She's better than me. She's smarter. Stronger. More… discipline-y."

Professor Ozpin smiled at that. "Yes, she is. All things you should strive to improve upon. But they're not the most important traits for a leader."

The leader wasn't supposed to be the best? "What are, then?" she asked.

Professor Ozpin slowly started walking down the hallway Weiss had taken, and after a moment of hesitation, Ruby followed. "Empathy, compassion, the willingness to put your teammates before yourself. All things Miss Schnee seems to lack at the moment, and things I see in you in abundance."

Ruby blushed and looked down at the ground. That was really nice to hear.

"Team leader is not just a badge of honor, but a burden of constant responsibility as well. You must always be at your best, and you are also responsible for making sure the other members of your team are also at their best."

He looked down at Ruby as they walked. "It's true, Miss Schnee's ahead of you in the skills and knowledge required to be a huntress. So are your sister and Miss Belladonna."

Ruby's shoulders slumped again. So she was the worst?

"_But_," Professor Ozpin stressed, "the role of leader is not to _be_ the best. It is to bring out the best in your team. Something I truly believe you can do. But you need to believe it as well, and figure out a way to do it."

Ruby frowned. _That_ was the hard part. "How?"

Professor Ozpin stopped before the entrance to a balcony that overlooked the school grounds, and Ruby realized with a start that Weiss was out there. Her hands were clenching the railing as she leaned against it, looking out to the horizon. It seemed so very fairy tale picturesque.

"I don't know, Ruby," Professor Ozpin stated simply. "That is for you to figure out."

He nodded to her, subtly ending the conversation, and walked out towards Weiss.

"Professor?" Ruby quietly called to his back.

He turned and tilted his head at her quizzically.

"Thank you," she said. "And… please don't get Weiss in trouble for any of this. She didn't do anything wrong." She hadn't. She was just understandably frustrated at Ruby and decided to say as much.

Professor Ozpin smiled warmly at her. "You're quite welcome, Ruby. And I won't. I'd simply like to take the opportunity to get to know your partner a bit better."

Ruby smiled in return, nodding. She turned away and slowly headed back toward the dorms.

Weiss was right. She deserved better. And she had Ruby.

So Ruby would just have to be better.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, guys! Geez, these chapters have been getting longer and longer... **

**Hope you enjoyed the OC of a "celebrity huntsman", which is something I firmly believe would be a thing in the world of Remnant. **

**In other news, I have a P/atreon account (PrayWaits) (why is this word censored, what the frickity frack), and I'd like to do something special. My first $10 subs will get to choose from a number of characters for me to do "interludes" for so we can glimpse what other people are doing in the world right now. I've got neat ideas ready for Cinder, Watts, and Raven, and some vague ideas for Hazel, Tyrian, and Qrow. You could, of course, request a different character, and I'll be happy to oblige as long as they exist in my version of RWBY (I'm not sure if I want Penny to be a thing because I have no clue what the plan was for her or why her character makes sense. Hoping V7 gives some insight into that.) **

**Anyway! Thanks for reading, and please leave reviews about what you liked and didn't like to help me learn! : )**


	7. Seeding 1-7

**Yikes. 9616 words in this chapter. My "The Badge and the Burden Part 2"! Hope you guys enjoy!**

* * *

Weiss took a deep breath, the wind bringing her scents of mown grass and something vaguely edible from the cafeteria.

'_Count to five, Weiss,' _her sister's voice rang in her ears. '_If you're still upset after that, then you can say it, not scream it.'_

She hadn't screamed at Ruby, but she might as well have. The worst part was that she couldn't bring herself to feel all that guilty about it.

The child was a hyperactive, irresponsible mess of a person that was placed _above_ Weiss for no discernable reason. Weiss had been dealing with it, trying her best not to explode on the little girl. But when Ruby had the audacity to explain the weak spot on a Boarbatusk-as if that was something Weiss hadn't already known-she'd lost it. As she had the right to! She was leagues better than Ruby, where did that idiot flower girl get off thinking she could teach Weiss _anything_?

Weiss knew she hadn't been performing all that well in that little… lesson, or whatever the professor thought that was. She'd been… off-balance. Uncentered. But she still knew how to kill a damn _Boarbatusk_.

Then Ruby had come out and yelled at Weiss. '_What's wrong with you?' _she'd said. Like Weiss was the one doing something wrong. Like it was _Weiss _that had woken her teammate up after midnight because she was being loud and inconsiderate. Like it was _Weiss_ who'd been late to her first ever class at an academy she'd been bumped two years and given a scholarship to go to. Like it was _Weiss _that was spitting on the honor of this education, paying absolutely no attention during class and spending her time doodling penguins and mocking images of the professor.

So Weiss had gone off on her. She'd said a lot of hurtful things-hurtful but true things-and had _hoped_ they would hurt. She'd hoped that Ruby's lackadaisical, uncaring attitude would take even the littlest bit of a hit to reflect the pain and self-disappointment that Weiss was drowning in now.

It seemed to have worked. The girl looked crushed, those beautiful silver eyes flinching at Weiss' words as she had looked at the floor in shame.

The more Weiss remembered that expression, the worse she felt. She couldn't escape the heavy feeling that she'd done something incredibly _wrong_ to bring such sadness to a face that seemed to know nothing but smiles.

But that was only because she was so immature and untested. Weiss grew up without the luxury of smiles, and it had made her strong. She hadn't survived the travesty of her childhood to be rewarded with the insult of being led by a clown like Ruby.

She was better than this. She _deserved_ bett-

"It seems you're having some struggles of personalities with your team leader, Miss Schnee," said a voice from behind her.

She turned to find Professor Ozpin walking toward her, lightly leaning on the cane that he seemed far too young and lithe to need.

"Were you hiding in the back of Professor Port's class too, sir?" she asked ironically.

"I was, actually," he admitted with an amused twinkle in his eyes. "Though it _is_ my school, so I think it's allowed."

Weiss nodded politely at the humor and turned to look back at the sun hidden behind fluffy white clouds. The rays of light looked like beams spearing down from the heavens, just as Beacon Tower looked like a spear rising from the earth.

She took a deep breath, knowing a lecture about her behaviour was coming. She didn't feel mad at it though-she new it was warranted.

Instead of a lecture, though, she was asked a question.

"Why are you here, Miss Schnee?"

"I needed some fresh air," she said stubbornly, knowing that wasn't what he was asking.

He smiled at her feigned misinterpretation, and Weiss had a feeling he saw right through it. "Why are you here at Beacon?" he asked this time. "Why did you not choose to attend Atlas Academy?"

Why was he asking that? Did he want her to leave Beacon and go somewhere else? How was she _supposed_ to answer that? She couldn't explain her fear of living in Winter's shadow to him. He wouldn't understand. Some nights _she _didn't understand.

"My sister went there," she finally said, hoping that simple statement would satisfy the headmaster.

It didn't.

"And?" he pressed her.

"And… I didn't want to go to the same school as she did." She really didn't want to get into _why _that was…

"Why is that?" Professor Ozpin asked softly.

Weiss sighed. She didn't really understand the point of all this needling into her motivations unless the headmaster wanted her to leave, and she really, _really_ hoped that wasn't what was happening.

She hugged her arms to herself as a chilly afternoon breeze flowed by announcing the imminent arrival of evening. '_I guess I'll have to try to explain this. He won't leave me alone until I do.' _She'd never tried explaining it to anyone else, nor had she ever wanted to; but she could tell he wasn't going to let it go…

"My… father always told us that Schnees must stand taller and rise above everyone around us. That we are too gifted-with talent, money, intellect-to do otherwise, and if we don't then we are failures." She looked down below her at all the students milling about in the courtyard-laughing, talking, running to class. All these students she had to surpass. She knew she was supposed to see fellow classmates, but all she saw was her competition.

"And if I'd gone to Atlas Academy… I never would have risen above Winter." It was hard to say out loud. It was hard to admit (to herself, let alone someone else) that she'd never reach Winter's level, that she'd always be the Second Schnee.

Maybe trying to be a huntress like Winter was a mistake. Maybe she should have given her life to music or something else. Something where she wouldn't have to compare herself to the one person she loved most only to find nothing but disappointment in herself.

Beside her, Ozpin leaned up against the railing like she was. "I see."

There was a long silence and Weiss could tell the headmaster was thinking of what he wanted to say or ask next.

"So you've come to Beacon to be the best," he surmised.

It was a simple statement, a plain observation, but something about hearing it said out loud by the headmaster of the school made tendrils of doubt crawl through her body. Could she really do it? Be the best in Beacon? She already had to compete against Pyrrha Freaking Nikos, and who knows what the other class years were like.

"That is an admirable and ambitious goal."

He didn't think she could do it eith-

"I think it's one you can achieve." Weiss blinked in surprise at the praise, but he wasn't done. "But nobody achieves anything here on their own." He turned and looked at her again. "Do you not think you can become the best as a member of Team RWBY?"

Her frustrations with her team bubbled over almost immediately. "I don't understand why I _have_ to! My team's not supposed to be _another_ obstacle for me to overcome. I'm better than Ruby. I'm smarter, faster, stronger, more disciplined, more driven. I don't…" She trailed off as she met the professor's thoughtful, soul-piercing eyes again.

"I don't understand why you chose her," she whispered.

Professor Ozpin gave one slow nod at her before turning back to the horizon and taking a deep breath. There was another long silence.

"Tell me, Weiss-may I call you Weiss?" Weiss nodded to him quickly, pleased that she was being shown this level of respect.

"Tell me, Weiss. What do you think makes a good team leader?"

… The question threw her off. It wasn't something she'd ever thought about, mostly because she'd always just assumed that the team leader was the best huntress on the team. Wasn't that what was most important?

Professor Ozpin seemed to read her lack of an answer in her expression and silence. "Take your time," he said. "It _is _a significant question."

The most obvious answer to her was "leadership", but… what even was that? Wouldn't a good leader be defined by whether or not her team listens to her? And if her teammates all understand that she's the best of them, then of course they'd listen to her. It would be stupid not to.

"I suppose…" she started hesitantly. She looked at Professor Ozpin doubtfully, still feeling uncertain that she was actually supposed to give an answer. But the professor gave her an encouraging nod.

"I suppose the team leader should be the best huntress-or huntsman. And she should work to help the members of her team to be as good as she is?" That made sense. If the leader was the best and helped the other teammates to get to her level, then they'd all improve, right?

Ozpin nodded slowly in thought again. "Interesting. I agree with the base idea there, though I think your premise is flawed."

Her premise… that the leader should be the best on the team? "How so?" she asked.

Professor Ozpin picked up his cane from beside him and twisted it in lazy circles as he leaned against the railing. "Do you think I would have made Jaune the leader of Team JNPR over Pyrrha if the leader should be the best member of the team?"

Weiss couldn't help but scoff at that. "No, but… I assumed you were wrong," she admitted honestly. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, terrified that he might get offended, but he seemed to want a genuine, honest conversation from her. Which was strange when she was just an inexperienced little kid compared to him.

He didn't seem insulted at all, though. He laughed softly through his nose and nodded, looking over to Beacon Tower. "Yes, that's fair," he said. "You are not the first to doubt my decisions, nor will you be the last. And I admit, I have often been wrong. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. But I like to think I've developed a knack for picking team leaders. I've been doing it for a very long time, after all, and I think the reputation of Beacon Academy can speak to that.

"I think what's most important in a leader is not that they _are _the best, but that they _want_ the best for their team, and that they _see_ the best in their team."

When Weiss frowned in confusion, he took a deep breath before continuing. "Tell me, do you think you've been the most accommodating and welcoming teammate to Ruby these past couple of days?"

Weiss flushed and looked away in response. The implication was clear, and Weiss was disappointed that the way she'd been treating Ruby was so easy to see. "No," she whispered.

"And how has Ruby treated you back?"

Weiss scowled and looked back at him. "She's been childish and immature and irresponsible. She was playing games instead of preparing for our first day of class and then she slept in and was late and cou-"

Professor Ozpin waved a hand to cut her off. There was nothing aggressive or impatient about the gesture, but Weiss stopped immediately all the same.

The professor looked at her meaningfully. "I understand what she's _done_ to upset you. But how has she _treated _you?"

Oh… Weiss scrolled back through her interactions with Ruby the past couple of days. Ruby had been… nice. She'd tried to include Weiss in all of the team's conversations and activities, she'd been respectful and supportive of Weiss' music, and she'd seem to be genuinely upset and regretful when Weiss had yelled at her about how lacking she'd been today.

"She's…" Weiss sighed as what the professor was saying started to make sense. "She's been nothing but sweet."

Professor Ozpin nodded. "Despite how… unpleasant you may have been, Ruby has tried her best to be a good teammate and friend." Weiss hung her head in shame at that description of her behaviour.

"But nice people are only nice because they're incapable of achieving what they want by themselves," she argued softly.

This time, it was Professor Ozpin who scoffed, a strange sound Weiss wasn't expecting. "More wisdom from your father?" he guessed aptly.

She gave a small smile and nodded, looking away again.

There was another long pause before he spoke again. "She agrees with you, you know," he said.

Weiss turned back to him with a frown.

"She knows you're better than she is, and she wants to try to be the leader she thinks you deserve. That's where you differ. She wants to be the best leader she can be, not for herself, but for you, for her sister and Miss Belladonna." His steady gaze held hers for a long while before Weiss had to look away.

"So, basically," Weiss griped bitterly, "I'm selfish and she's selfless."

Ozpin cocked his head to the side and studied her for a moment before shrugging lightly. "Yes," he said simply.

That hurt. She knew it was true, but it still hurt to hear, especially from a headmaster.

"There's a lot that Ruby can learn from you, Weiss. And there's a lot that you can learn from her. And there's nothing stopping you from becoming the best huntress Beacon has ever seen just because you don't carry the badge and burden of team leader."

Weiss smiled at that. It was a small vote of confidence, but it was one all the same.

"And I think Ruby will do everything she can to help you get there. If you give her the chance." He gave her another long look before pushing himself away from the rail.

"Have a good night, Weiss. And well done in class today."

With that, he walked away, whistling and swinging his cane along beside him.

Yeah, he definitely didn't need that thing. Weiss figured it must be his weapon.

She turned back to look over the school grounds. What was she supposed to do now? Everything Professor Ozpin had said was right, she knew that. She usually walked around with the assumption that she was the smartest person in the room/building/kingdom, but she couldn't delude herself into thinking she knew more about huntsman teams that Professor Ozpin, headmaster extraordinaire.

So now she had to accept that Ruby was the better leader. She had thought that meant Ruby was the better huntress, but Professor Ozpin had put that fear to rest. And Weiss had to admit that the reasons Ozpin gave for why she'd be a bad leader were true-she was selfish. Not only that, she was also elitist, snobbish… mean.

An apology was owed to Ruby. She might be a naive goofball, but it came from a place of innocence, and she hadn't deserved the cruelty Weiss had subjected her to.

Weiss sighed. She hated apologizing. She hated admitting she was in the wrong even to herself, and when you apologize you're also admitting it to someone else. But it needed to be done.

A stream of rose petals shot across the courtyard down below, the line of flowers trailing from the cafeteria to the dorm. Smiling at the sight, Weiss let go of those last traces of anger she'd been holding on to.

She started her slow trek back to their room, trying to figure out what she should say to her partner.

'_Sorry for being a jerk?' _

'_I was wrong, and I think you can be a great leader?'_

'_I'm going to be the best teammate ever?'_

'_I'm sorry?'_

Should she just go for all of them? What did Ruby need to hear the most? What had Weiss said that had hurt her the most?

'_I thought you believed in acting as a team,' _was what Ruby had said when she looked on the verge of tears.

Weiss needed to show her partner that she _did_ want to be a good teammate. But how? A gift? Schnees were good at buying people things. She should get Ruby something that showed that she cared, something Ruby would like…

Cookies? Strawberries? Strawberry cookies?

Her family had been served some sort of strawberry white chocolate shortbread cookie once at a post-concert dinner. Weiss doubted Ruby had ever had that before. Perhaps giving her a new cookie experience would help fix things?

Weiss also remembered their shopping trip yesterday, how Ruby had been so eager to get "fancy Weiss clothes".

An idea started to form in Weiss' mind. It was one that she'd need Yang's permission for first, though. She didn't want to cause any trouble between the two sisters, and Yang had been _very_ against Ruby getting clothes like Weiss'.

With a groan, Weiss realized that trying to be a better teammate would also mean figuring out how to get along with Yang. Making amends with Ruby was one thing-Weiss was the one making things difficult between them, and Ruby was nothing but nice in return. But Yang seemed to despise Weiss.

'_One thing at a time, Weiss.'_

Ruby first. Ruby was her team leader and her partner. And Weiss imagined it would be far easier to fix whatever was broken between her and Yang if she could make things right with Ruby.

It probably wouldn't even be too hard to make up with Ruby. Weiss imagined the girl would forgive her before the words "I'm sorry" had even left her mouth. But Weiss wanted to make sure that she was actually worth forgiving.

Pulling out her scroll, she quickly searched for bakeries in Vale, happily surprised that the most expensive one in the kingdom, Wafer's Treats, was only twenty minutes away.

She wasn't sure Yang would allow her to give Ruby the gift she really wanted to, but cookies would certainly be better than nothing.

With a tap she summoned a car.

* * *

"What do you _mean_ you don't have any strawberry-white chocolate cookies?"

The baker seemed flabbergasted at Weiss. "I'm sorry, lady. It's not something that's normally ordered."

Weiss huffed and crossed her arms, turning her attention to the display case in front of her. There were a lot of cookies and cupcakes that she was sure Ruby would enjoy, but they either seemed standard or ostentatious: there were chocolate chip cookies next to gold-flaked buttercreams, and there seemed to be no in between.

Ruby would eat the luxury cookies all the same, Weiss was pretty sure, but she didn't want to just throw an expensive gift at the problem. The strawberry cookie idea had seemed much more… personal. Meaningful.

She took a deep breath. "Would you be able to make some?" she asked the baker, whose eyebrows rose in surprise. "Special order? I'll pay."

His eyes went distant as he scratched his short-trimmed beard in thought. "I'd have to run to the market down the street and get some strawberry cake mix…"

Weiss frowned. "I'd like cookies, not a cake."

The look the man gave her told her she'd just said something incredibly stupid.

"You use the mix for cookies too, dear."

'_Oh.'_

After a moment, the man nodded to himself. "Aye, I could do it," he decided. "Normally a dozen would be something around twenty-five lien. If you want me to go through all this extra effort it'll cost you fifty."

Weiss waved her hand at him impatiently. "Yes, yes fine. How quickly will they be ready?"

The man seemed surprised by how willing she was to overpay for cookies. This was one of very few reasons she'd miss Atlas-in Atlas, everybody knew who she was, who her family was. They knew the kind of quality the Schnees expected from their purchases, and they knew that money wasn't an object for the family.

The baker stroked his beard again. "I can't leave the shop empty, and my assistant for the evening will get here in an hour. Give me two hours?"

Two hours? She could go shopping for everything and learn to bake the cookies herself in that time frame!

"If you can get it done in one I'll pay you an extra hundred lien and recommend your store to my cookie aficionado friend."

His hand froze on his chin. He looked around at this currently empty store for a moment before nodding. "You've got yourself a deal, missy."

Satisfied, Weiss gave him a nod. "I'll see you in an hour, then."

Outside, she took a moment to enjoy the environment. She was in a quaint outdoor shopping mall that was clearly marketing itself to the wealthy population of Vale. There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard, from which textured stone tiles were arranged on well kept grass to form pathways between the stores.

The evening sun was poking above the buildings and clouds to the west, and the evening breeze had gotten cooler. It was a nice day.

Weiss spent a long while just walking around the plaza enjoying the day. There were a few people moving around, shopping and socializing, but not many. The work day was only just now ending, though, so Weiss figured the rush would be on its way soon.

She took her opportunity before the throngs of people came-Weiss didn't like crowds much. She hated getting jostled, the unwanted physical contact from strangers as people pushed their way forward. But this? A few people debating between clothing boutiques, a couple sitting in a coffee shop patio, and Weiss? This was nice.

She frowned as she realized the couple were faunus, but alas, no place was perfect.

Stopping before a store named "Cerise Moran Clothing", Weiss pursed her lips in thought. Cerise Moran was a well known fashion designer from Vacuo, and Weiss and her mother had actually been to the Cerise Moran Clothing in Atlas several times back when her mother still went out. Weiss was fairly certain the blouse she'd worn that Ruby wanted to duplicate was one of Moran's design.

Would Ruby like this place? Weiss wanted to take her clothes shopping this weekend-as long as she could convince Yang to allow it-but she was unsure if Ruby would feel… comfortable in such a high class establishment. There were only a couple of mannequins on display in the window, one of a woman's figure with an elaborate corset dress and the other a dashing male getup of a button-up vest and shirt.

Weiss pushed her way inside.

A bell chimed above her head to announce her arrival. The inside of the store was beautiful, the exact kind of layout and interior design Weiss loved. It was a single, long, rectangular room. There were a very few small glass tables, each with either a single item of clothing arrayed on them or a handful of tasteful accessories, interspaced around the room. Along the walls on the side were some shelves with shoes and some spaced out racks with a single shirt or legging on display.

The walls and floor were a warm wood panelling, except the back wall, which was an off-white tile. In front of that wall was the register counter, where a beautiful, lightly tanned blonde woman in a flattering blouse and skirt that was very similar to Weiss' own style, though in colorful pastels of pink and deep purple.

"Good afternoon!" the woman crowed as Weiss stepped across the threshold. Weiss gave her a polite nod.

"Would you like some time to browse?" she asked, not moving from where she stood behind the counter.

"Yes, please." Weiss was glad this wasn't one of those bubbly, overzealous employees that wanted to try to "help you find your style", as if Weiss didn't already know what she wanted.

"Of course," the woman nodded. "Just so you know, all of the colors that you see on the palettes beside an article are available in the back and in all sizes-except for a couple of which we're currently out of stock of size zeros."

Weiss nodded in understanding as she began meandering through the tables.

One table sported a selection of jewelry and beauty accessories-gold and gemstone bracelets, thing white and gold watches, earrings with sapphires cut to resemble Water Dust crystals. Ooh, Weiss liked those.

But no, she wasn't here to shop for herself. She wasn't here to shop at all. She was here to scout, and these baubles didn't seem like the kind of thing Ruby would wear.

Abandoning the table of trinkets, she headed over to the wall of blouses. They each were lovely designed and well made. There were a couple with tassels streaming from the shoulders that made her raise her eyebrows, but the rest were lovely. Cerise Moran always had an intricate way of weaving lace into her garments that Weiss loved.

She stopped suddenly, coming face to face with an almost exact replica of the blouse Ruby had liked. So it _was_ a Cerise Moran design. There were some differences to this version, as the one Weiss had was a couple years old now. The frockey had a light blue lace coming out of it in this new design, and the adornment strips on the shoulders were now split into two thinner bits of fabric. But it was easily close enough that Ruby would like it.

She looked at the color palette card embedded into the wall. There were eight color swapped versions of blouse, one of which was black with silver buttons and green lace and adornments.

Green? Damn it. That was almost perfect. Ruby liked black, clearly, and the silver buttons would look great with her eyes. But that green definitely wouldn't fit her…

She took a step back to bring the employee in view. "Miss?" she called out, lifting her hand.

The woman walked over at a brisk pace. "Yes ma'am?" she asked as she approached Weiss' side. Whatever perfume she was wearing smelled like the ocean, and in Weiss' opinion she was wearing a little too much of it.

She gestured at the blouse in question. "For this one, this color palette here says you have one in black with silver buttons and green accents."

The woman nodded. "Yes, would you like to see it?"

"I would, but I also wanted to ask if it would be possible to get the green swapped for the red on this palette." She pointed to the beige/black/red color combination a little lower on the palette card.

Again, the woman nodded enthusiastically. "Absolutely! It would cost extra to make the modifications, of course, and it would take a couple of days."

Weiss nodded. "That's fine. It would be ready by Saturday, then?"

"Indeed. The cost increase would be our standard fifteen percent. Is that accep-"

"Yes, that's fine," Weiss cut her off. She hadn't even bothered looking at the price tag anyway, it was so insignificant.

Nodding, the woman gestured toward the payment counter. "If you could provide your name and contact information, we'll notify you when it's ready."

"Of course."

They walked to the counter together, where the worker handed Weiss a very nice fountain pen and a clipboard with a table for her information.

"What size would you like?" she asked, moving towards the door to the back room.

Ruby would be the same size as Weiss, right? They were almost the same height, Weiss only seeming taller because of her heels.

"Size one, please."

The woman headed to the back with a nod.

Weiss quickly filled out her information. For the next couple of minutes she perused the jewelry and shoes on display nearby. They were all very cute, and Weiss very much wanted to buy something for herself, but she already had very similar things. Also, she was here for Ruby, not herself. She knew it was silly, but she felt like if she forced herself to not get anything for herself then maybe that would mean she wasn't _that_ selfish. She was here only for somebody else. That was good, right?

The woman walked back out with one each of the black and beige blouses draped across an arm. She laid them both out on the desk in front of Weiss.

"I brought this one out so you could see the red," she said, gesturing to the beige garment.

Hmm. It wasn't quite what she'd been expecting or hoping for. The red of the fabric was not as saturated as the printing on the card. "Would you happen to have a deeper red? Closer to rose red?"

The woman pressed her lips together. "We do not, unfortunately. Not for these pieces, anyway."

Weiss frowned. It wasn't perfect, and her brain itched at the thought of giving a gift that wasn't completely, utterly perfect.

"Miss… Schnee?" the woman said in shock as she looked at the paper where Weiss had filled out her information. She looked from the paper to Weiss and back, realization dawning on her.

Weiss did her best to hide her smirk.

"Y-you know, Miss Schnee," she stammered, "we could have rose red adornments custom made and sent from Vacuo, if you'd like."

Weiss was already thinking about requesting that, so she smiled at the offer. "How long would it take for the blouse to be ready if you did that?"

The woman blinked rapidly as she tried to figure it out. "I'm not sure, exactly. Ten to fourteen days?... Ma'am."

Weiss had somewhat missed this deference, the eagerness people always had to make sure a Schnee was completely satisfied with their service.

How picky would Ruby be? Probably not at all, but now Weiss was determined to make sure the blouse was perfect. She wouldn't be able to look at Ruby in it if it was anything but.

"How about…" she started to muse. Figuring out how she wanted to do this, she snapped her gaze to the now wide-eyed, slightly terrified woman. "I'll be returning on Saturday with a friend. That's who this would be for. She has a red cloak she's fond of. Would you be able to have a color match to the fabric made for this purpose, and then we'll return to pick it up in a couple weeks when it's ready?"

The employee nodded so quickly and vehemently Weiss was afraid she'd suddenly become a bobblehead. "O-of course! Yes, we'd be happy to… F-for a mark-up, of course." She broke eye contact at that last sentence, suddenly finding the fountain pen more interesting than Weiss.

Weiss rolled her eyes. This awkwardness-the "how much can we get a Schnee to pay" bit-never happened in Atlas. Everyone there had learned long ago that the Schnees would pay any price as long as it wasn't absurd.

"Naturally," she drawled.

Sensing that if she stayed any longer the poor woman's heart might explode, she decided to take her leave. "Thank you for your accommodation. I'll be back on Saturday."

The woman nodded numbly. "Yes, of course!"

As Weiss walked out, the woman called out one last "Have a great night!" before the door closed.

Weiss smiled. That had gone very well. The delay in receiving the blouse would be slightly annoying, but Weiss was almost certain Ruby would love it. And it would look great on her. And Weiss could always just get her something else as well while they were here on Saturday.

And now she'd made a commitment to be here on Saturday with Ruby. Which meant she _had_ to find a way to make Yang okay with it.

Checking the time on her scroll, she happily noted it would be only a couple minutes until the baker's hour finished.

She could smell the strawberry flavor as soon as she opened the door. At the register now was a boy that was probably Ruby's age, with dark skin, short cut hair, and a wide smile. There were also a couple other people eating at the tables in the cafe seating off to the left. The baker himself wasn't in sight, but Weiss assumed he was in the back finishing up her cookies.

'_Ruby's cookies,'_ she corrected herself.

"Hello," she said to the boy as she approached the counter. "I'm here to pick up some strawberry shortbread cookies?"

"Oh, _you're _Strawberry Girl," the boy said with a grumpy pout. "I had to come in an hour early because of you."

Weiss frowned at the uncourteous welcome, but before she could respond the boy walked to the entrance to the back room.

"MISTER WAFER! STRAWBERRY GIRL IS HERE!"

Well, that explained the name of the shop. The man's name was Wafer. Oddly thematic for a baker.

The man himself came bustling out a moment later, a white box with a viewing window a clear plastic on the lid in his hands.

"Ah, welcome back, Miss. Just got done adding the finishing touches a moment ago. He shuffled over to the register, waving a broad arm for her to follow him. With a ceremonious wave of his hands he placed the box on the counter and pulled up the lid.

Beautiful seemed a strange word to describe cookies, but it was the first that came to Weiss' mind. Light pink and near perfect circles, with white chocolate chips evenly dotting their surface and covered in a fine layer of powdered sugar, each of the dozen cookies looked like Mister Wafer had treated it like a work of art. That came as no surprise to Weiss-the desserts in the display case had already indicated the man's dedication to his craft, and he wasn't the highest priced and rated baker in the kingdom for nothing.

"They look wonderful," she praised him happily, leaning forward to breath in the smells. Weiss didn't have much of a sweet tooth but the fruity aroma of these cookies was something she found immensely pleasing.

"Glad you like 'em!" the man rumbled with a chuckle. "They'll taste even better, promise."

Weiss smiled as she pulled out her wallet. "I'm sure they will."

She handed the man two one hundred lien notes, but waved him away when he started to pull out change.

"Please, keep it. For the great work, and…" she glanced at the boy that was leaning against the back counter behind the baker. "For the inconvenience."

The man stared in stunned gratitude. "Th-thank you, Miss." The man wrapped a soft pink strip of light cloth around the four sides of the box and tied a neat bow on top, a surprisingly delicate feat for his large hands. "Please, come again," he said as he handed her the box.

Now it was Weiss' turn to chuckle. "I'm sure I will. Even if these aren't a hit-which I'm sure they will be-I think my friend would absolutely _love_ your establishment."

The man's voice called out to her as she reached the door. "I didn't catch your name, Miss."

She turned and gave him a small smile. "It's Weiss," she replied.

Just Weiss. She didn't need to bring up her last name to this man that clearly already gave nothing but exceptional service. Besides, if she wanted to come here with Ruby, it would be nice to be just Weiss.

Mister Wafer nodded to her. "Look forward to seeing you again, Weiss."

With a nod, she headed out.

The courtyard was now filling up with people, and the sun itself was no longer visible behind the shops and clouds, its warm rays painting the sky a soft orange.

Weiss summoned another car.

* * *

Weiss placed the box of cookies in one of the kitchen cupboards for safekeeping. She was planning to bring Ruby out here really quickly, but she didn't feel confident in leaving the cookies out on the counter with the Team CRDL animals lurking around somewhere.

Creeping down the hallway to their room, Weiss felt anxiety and apprehension start to creep in. She really hoped Yang and Blake weren't with Ruby at the moment. This apology would be hard enough without an audience.

Was the beep from unlocking the door always that damn loud?

She pushed the door open slowly, and Weiss was once again glad they were living in a brand new dorm building because the hinges didn't scream her presence to the world. With a nervous peak she confirmed that Blake and Yang's desks and beds were empty.

A relieved sigh passing through her lips, she swung the door completely open to find Ruby sitting at her desk-or rather, passed out at her desk, laying down on her arm that rested on top of an open textbook.

The sight made Weiss' heart twist around in a strange mix of sadness and gratitude. Gratitude that Ruby seemed to be at least starting to commit to her studies and taking her position a little more seriously, but sadness that the catalyst for this change was Weiss' terrible behaviour.

Weiss walked around Ruby and took her own seat at the desk, turning her chair to face her partner. "Ruby," she whispered.

No response.

Reaching out, Weiss lightly shook Ruby's shoulders with her fingertips, an unnatural thing for her to do since she was so uncomfortable with physical contact with others. "Ruby!"

Ruby sat straight up with a snort, quickly rubbing at the edge of her mouth like she'd been drooling as she looked around confused. "Weiss? Weiss!"

Ruby almost fell out of her chair as she scrambled to turn to Weiss. "Weiss, I'm so sorry! I should have been trying harder and been more serious and I'm sorry that you got stuck with me as your leader and I know you've worked really hard and I-"

"Ruby, stop." Weiss placed a hand lightly on the girl's shoulder to reinforce the message. Ruby stopped her emotional rambling immediately, staring at Weiss with wide, scared eyes. "_I'm_ the one that's sorry. I shouldn't have said all those terrible things to you."

Ruby blinked in confusion. "You're not still mad at me?"

Weiss gave her a small smile and shook her head. "Professor Ozpin talked to me and… pointed some things out to me that I hadn't been thinking about." She took a deep breath as she tried to steel herself for what she needed to say next. "One of the things he made me realize is that the way I was treating you wasn't okay, regardless of what you were doing. And he also made me realize… I'm not a leader." Ruby's jaw dropped in surprise at that difficult admission.

"But I think you are," Weiss continued. "Or at least, you can be if you're willing to put in the work." She nodded at the Grimm Anatomy and Behavioural Studies textbook that say open in front of Ruby.

"I am!" Ruby quickly replied with a few rapid nods. "I promise I'll work super hard and be the team leader you deserve." Her eyes darted shyly away from Weiss' at those last words, and Weiss felt a flood of emotions she didn't really understand come rushing in.

Briefly struggling to regain her composure, she finally whispered a soft, "I believe you."

Ruby turned back to her and gave her an uncertain smile. "Yeah? 'Cause I mean it. For real."

Weiss smiled. "I know, Ruby." The girl was earnest and honest, and Weiss no longer had any doubts that she would give her all to being the best team leader she could be. "And I promise to be the best teammate ever."

Smiling broadly, Ruby wiggled in a goofy little happy dance before throwing her arms around Weiss.

"Oh!" Weiss huffed out in surprise, giving Ruby an awkward pat on the back. Schnees weren't really huggers.

When Ruby pulled back to give her another big grin, Weiss smiled coyly at her in return. "I got you something. Something to say I'm sorry."

"Weiss! You didn't have to do that!"

Weiss chuckled softly. "I know, but I wanted to. Come on." She stood and gestured for Ruby to follow her out to the kitchen. She patted one of the barstools as she walked past it. "Sit," she ordered. "And close your eyes."

Ruby tentatively pulled herself onto the stool, closing her eyes and kicking her feet excitedly.

Weiss pulled out the box of cookies and quietly set it in front of Ruby. Should she open it herself and let the smell hit Ruby first? Or should she let Ruby have the satisfaction of untying the bow? Why was she fretting so much about something so trivial?

She did her best to shake off her jitters. Ruby would like these. They're cookies! All indications showed that Ruby loved any and every type of cookie on the planet.

She cleared her throat. "Okay, open your eyes."

The joy she got from watching Ruby's eyes open and then open wider and wider as her jaw dropped actually surprised Weiss. She'd never given too many gifts before, mostly just some personalized things to Winter and half-hearted birthday presents to Whitley, and neither of her siblings were much for open displays of emotion.

Ruby's emotions were broadcast to the entire world, though, her happy, grateful face a completely open book that made Weiss feel like she'd accomplished something special. Rationally, she knew she hadn't. She'd bought some cookies. But Ruby's expression made her feel like she'd just won the Vital Festival Tournament.

"Whooooooooa!" Ruby breathed out. "These are so pretty! What _are_ they?"

Weiss smiled, happy that her guess that Ruby had never had these before was correct. "They're strawberry shortbread cookies with white chocolate chips."

Ruby somehow got even happier. "You remembered I like strawberries!"

"But of course," Weiss said, somewhat confused as it had been mentioned just yesterday. She supposed Ruby wasn't surprised at her ability to remember so much as the fact that she'd _cared_ to remember at all. Another pang of guilt hit Weiss in the chest as she realized she must have made herself seem like a pretty awful person.

When Ruby spent a few long moments just staring in awe at the box, Weiss finally decided to nudge her on. "Why don't you open it up and try one?"

Ruby did another wiggle dance and pulled on the neat little bow, unwrapping it and pulling the lid up.

The smell of strawberries was wonderfully fragrant as it poured out of the box.

"They smell so gooooooood!" Ruby breathed out after inhaling the aroma.

She gingerly pulled a cookie out of the box and stared at it in her hand with a goofily adoring expression, then pushed the box towards Weiss.

Weiss shook her head lightly. "I got them for you, Ruby."

Ruby frowned before coming to some realization. "Oh, did you already have some?"

Weiss shook her head again, bringing Ruby's confused frown back. "No, I just got them for _you_. And I'm sure you'll like them more than I would, so you should have them all."

That just made sense. Ruby would almost certainly like them more than Weiss, so these cookies would bring the most amount of happiness if Ruby had them all.

"Oh, would you not like these?" Ruby wondered, frowning down at the box.

Weiss smiled. "Oh no, they smell delicious. But I'm sure you'll like them more."

Ruby shook her head and threw it back like she'd just heard something shockingly ridiculous. "What the heck, Weiss! You gotta have some too! Please try at least one with me!" She gave Weiss an adorable set of puppy dog eyes. "Please?"

What the Crucible, how was she supposed to say no to that face?

Luckily, she really _did_ want to try one. Mister Wafer was clearly a talented baker and these seemed amazing.

"Okay. Just one though," she capitulated, earning another giant grin from her partner.

"Woo!"

Weiss hopped down from her stool and grabbed a paper towel, tearing it and placing the halves in front of herself and Ruby so they wouldn't get crumbs everywhere. After Weiss settled back in her seat and picked up a cookie of her own, Ruby turned to her and said, "Alright, on three."

Oh boy, she wanted to eat a cookie in unison. Weiss smiled. As much as Ruby was committing to working hard and becoming a great huntress and leader, she _was_ still a child.

Weiss nodded to indicate she was ready.

"'Kay. One… Two… Three!"

They both bit into their cookies together (Ruby's bit was much larger than Weiss'), Weiss giggling lightly at the absurdity of the moment before going silent as the cookie hit her taste buds.

"Oh my Grimm," Ruby gasped through a mouthful of pastry.

'_Oh my Grimm, indeed.'_

It was every bit as delicious as she'd been expecting and more. Soft and chewy, the fruity shortbread combined so well with the subtly nutty sweetness of the white chocolate. Weiss could have done without the powdered sugar, but she suspected it was a hit with the euphoric brunette beside her, so she didn't mind in the slightest.

"Weiss, this is _amazing_, thank you so much."

Weiss smiled widely, glad that her gift was such a hit. Taking a moment to swallow, she replied, "I'm glad you like them. We should go together next time to get some more. I have a feeling you'll like that place."

Ruby's eyes went wide. "Yeah? Is it a super awesome fancy pants bakery?"

Weiss laughed openly at that, the loud noise filling the room and making Weiss blink in surprise. That was a new sound from her.

"It is," she answered after a moment. She placed her cookie down on the paper towel as Ruby comically crammed the rest of hers into her mouth.

"Oh! That reminds me. While I was there I found a clothing boutique that has some really nice stuff if you'd like to go fancy-people-clothing shopping this weekend."

"Really?" Ruby bounced excitedly. Then, suddenly, her face fell. "But… I can't-"

"I'll talk to Yang," Weiss reassured her.

"I-what? No, it's not about her permission. It's… she's right. We can't afford it."

"Wait, what?" Weiss frowned at her partner. "Ruby, _I'd_ be paying. It would be my treat!" She tried to sound upbeat as she said it, hoping that would pull Ruby out of the mood she'd just fallen in.

"Weiss, no! I can't let you do that!" Ruby seemed genuinely taken aback by the offer, which Weiss didn't understand.

"Ruby, I can _more_ than afford it, I promise. I have a stupidly large allowance and have been stockpiling everything I don't use in a savings account for years. Getting you some outfits would be easily doable."

"But-"

"Please?" Weiss tried to imitate the puppy dog eyes Ruby had just used on her, though from Ruby's unconvinced expression she had a feeling it wasn't working. That made sense. Weiss hadn't ever tried to beg for anything before.

"Can we talk to my sister about it?" Ruby asked, her gaze falling to her hands.

Weiss nodded in understanding. "Yes, of course."

It was crucial now that she figure out a way to convince Yang to allow this.

Voices floating into the room pulled their attention down the hall. Pyrrha and Nora were coming back from somewhere, heading toward their room.

"Hello again!" Pyrrha greeted Weiss and Ruby with a wave as she and Nora entered the communal area.

Nora gasped loudly. "What are _those_?!" She dashed in between Weiss and Ruby (jostling Weiss in the process, which was kind of annoying) and leaned over the open box of cookies.

"They're super awesome cookies Weiss got from a fancy cookie shop!" Ruby chirped happily.

"They smell so _gooood_!" Nora groaned dramatically.

"Do you want one?" Ruby asked. She leaned back to meet Weiss' eyes. "Can we give her one?"

Weiss smiled at the way Ruby felt like she needed to ask for permission. "They're yours, Ruby. You can share them however you'd like."

That provoked a please bounce from Ruby, who then gestured at the box to Nora. "Go ahead and try one! Pyrrha, do you want one?"

Pyrrha, to her credit, politely looked at Weiss for confirmation. Weiss gave her an encouraging nod. She was slightly disappointed that Ruby was just giving away her gift, but if that was part of what made it enjoyable to her, Weiss didn't want to get in the way of that.

More proof that Professor Ozpin was right about Ruby being selfless.

"Oh 'y 'imm," Nora muttered through a mouthful of cookie. Weiss couldn't see any partially eaten cookie in her hand. Had this maniac of a girl just shoved the whole thing in her mouth?

"Wow, this is delicious," Pyrrha commented as she nibbled on her own.

Ruby smiled happily, and Weiss had the sense that the girl was feeling the same strange sense of accomplishment that she had when Ruby had liked her gift.

"'an I 'ave ano'er one?" Nora asked.

"Okay, that's enough," Pyrrha said quickly, clamping a hand on Nora's shoulder and steering her toward their room. "Thank you, Weiss. Thank you, Ruby," she smiled over her shoulder as she lead her teammate away.

If Weiss believed in luck, she would thank her lucky stars that she'd gotten Ruby as her hyperactive teammate instead of Nora.

With the exit of the members of Team JNPR, Weiss and Ruby fell into a comfortable silence as they munched on their treats. Weiss was still on her single cookie when Ruby finished her third.

"Oh!" Ruby suddenly cried out, jumping to her feet. "I got something for you too! Be right back!"

Weiss didn't even have time to react before she was staring at nothing but a cloud of rose petals that trailed to their room.

_Ruby_ had gotten _Weiss_ something? What on Remnant did she think Weiss needed? Weiss was the richest girl in the world, she didn't really _need_ anything, and she couldn't imagine much that she was wanting for.

With a start, she realized she _had_ told Ruby that she was considering picking up the cello. There was no way Ruby would have bought a _cello_, right?

A rush of warm, rose scented air washed over Weiss as another burst of roses brought Ruby back in front of her. The girl's hands were hiding something behind her back, and she had a teasing smile that told Weiss she was extra confident she'd picked a good gift.

Well, there was no way Ruby could hide a cello behind her back, so that worry dissipated quickly.

"Close your eyes!" Ruby chirped.

Grinning and folding her hands together in her lap, Weiss did as she was told. She felt Ruby's presence as the the brunette moved closer to move the paper towel with Weiss' cookie to the side, warm breath tickling her neck and collarbone.

She heard Ruby pull herself back up into her seat.

"Okay, open!"

Weiss opened her eyes.

...

Paint.

It was a box of a dozen acrylic paints and a small package with three simple paint brushes.

Her mind immediately brought her back to her childhood, painting happily at an easel next to Winter. Winter had always been the better artist, Weiss the better musician, but Winter had always welcomed Weiss to come paint with her, even helping her when she couldn't get the brushstrokes and colors quite right.

Those had been the good old days. Whitley was a toddler then, too young and innocent to be the obnoxious cretin he'd grown into. It was before her father had told her mother those terrible things on Weiss' tenth birthday, so her parents were still nice to each other then, were still able to be in the same room together. Willow was still the moderately attentive and caring mother that disappeared in the bottom of a wine bottle after Weiss' father had said those words.

She'd been happy then.

"You said your dad made you stop," Ruby said nervously to her feet, drawing Weiss out of her memories. "But he's not here now, and you said painting made you happy, so… I thought you might like this."

'_Do _not _cry, Weiss. Don't. Don't cry. Don'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry.'_

She couldn't do anything to stop the tears from slipping out.

"Weiss!"

Ruby grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, but Weiss could barely even see her teammate now, her vision was so blurred by tears.

'_Don't cry. Schnees don't cry. _You _don't cry. You're stronger than that.'_

A sob slipped out, and when Ruby reached out to hug her, Weiss fell into her arms and buried her face in her partner's shoulders.

"I'm so sorry," Ruby whispered. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I thought you'd like them."

Weiss tried to talk, to say something, to tell Ruby that she didn't like them, she _loved _them, that it meant the world to her that Ruby had thought of such a gift.

Instead, more sobs slipped out, and she gasped for air as her shoulders shook against her will.

'_Stop _crying_, Weiss. Stop.'_

Her father's voice rang out in her head. '_Tears are for those that can't get what they want. You are a Schnee. You can always get what you want.'_

But there was no way for her to get her family back. That was broken beyond repair.

Weiss didn't know how long she cried in Ruby's arms while her partner held her and did what she could to comfort her, stroking her hair and whispering soft words like "I'm sorry" and "It's okay" over and over.

After an eternity her body seemed to finish letting out the grief she'd been bottling up for years, and she was able to collect herself and pull away from Ruby. She hid her eyes as she wiped at them, tearing off a piece of the paper towel beside her to clean up her nose.

Ruby stayed uncharacteristically quiet, watching Weiss with sad eyes will Weiss avoided her gaze, shoulders slumped while she pulled in ragged, shallow breaths.

Another long while passed, silence in the room but for Weiss' quiet sniffles. Ruby reached out and placed her hand on Weiss'.

Instinctively, Weiss flinched away from the contact, but when Ruby moved to pull her hand back, Weiss reached out and grabbed it. It was comforting. Something-some_one_-to hold on to. Ground her. Remind her that the here and now was the Beacon freshman dorm communal room with Ruby, not the expansive arts and music room in the Schnee manor with the ghosts of her family.

Ruby squeezed lightly, rubbing her thumb across the back of Weiss' hand. "I'm so sorry," she whispered again. "I'll get rid of them."

"No!" Weiss cried out immediately, surprising both Ruby and herself with her fervor. "No, don't. Please. I love them. I… they just reminded me of something I'd been trying really hard to forget… I'm sorry."

Ruby frowned. "Why are _you_ sorry?"

Weiss wheezed out a dry laugh. "I didn't mean to…" she trailed off and waved her free hand in the air, trying to indicate the breakdown she'd just had without saying it out loud.

Ruby nodded in understanding. "Don't be sorry for that. It's okay to be sad sometimes."

Weiss tried to smile back at her partner. Ruby probably understood this aching pain. She'd lost her mom. _Actually_ lost her mom. At least Weiss' mother was still around, even if she wasn't the same person anymore.

They sat in silence again for a time, Ruby still holding and rubbing Weiss' hand comfortingly. She didn't ask Weiss what had caused that moment of weakness, didn't try to push. She just… stayed there. And that was exactly what Weiss needed.

When Weiss' breathing settled and she finally felt like she had full control of her emotions, she gently pulled her hand away and placed it on the box of paints after wiping at her eyes one last time.

"Thank you, Ruby."

Ruby smiled at her uncertainly, clearly confused about what had happened but unsure what she should say.

Weiss wanted to move on. They'd been having such a nice interaction before Weiss temporarily broke, and she wanted to get back to that instead of dwelling on this sadness she didn't want to explain.

"So, how was the reading for Grimm Studies going?" she asked, schoolwork being the first distraction her mind landed on.

Ruby nodded slowly, understanding what Weiss wanted. "Well, it was so boring I fell asleep, if that's any indication," she joked with a small smile.

Weiss returned the smile. "Want some help getting through it?"

Ruby scratched her head. "No, it's mostly boring 'cause I already know most of the stuff about Beowolves and Ursai. But… could you help me with the Dust Theory stuff?" Hopeful silver eyes shined up at Weiss, and grinned happily.

"Of course!" She hopped down and was about to put the cookies away when Ruby grabbed the box and started bringing it toward their room.

"Hey!" Weiss called, making the girl stop and turn like a deer in headlights. "Don't bring food into the room!" Weiss scolded.

Ruby pouted. "But Weiiiiiiss, cookies are like the only thing that makes studying sufferable!"

Weiss snorted at that and grabbed some extra paper towels. "Fine, but no crumbs on the floor or I'm freezing you in a block of ice overnight."

"As you command, your majesty," Ruby teased with a mock curtsy-a very terrible curtsy at that. That was something they'd need to work on.

"So how many cookies were in this fancy cookie shop?" Ruby asked while bouncing at Weiss' side as they headed to their room.

Weiss smiled.


	8. Seeding 1-8

**Taming the chapter length down to a manageable level here. xD Hope you guys enjoy! **

* * *

Ruby remembered to set her alarm this time.

Of course, it was her scroll, and that sneaky bugger was hiding suspiciously well, so Ruby was currently flailing around in her covers trying to find it to turn it off.

Aha! There it was, under her butt.

A pillow flying into her face and knocking her over let her know that her alarm had woken up Yang, too.

They only had one class today-and it was _History_, bleh-and it was in the afternoon, but Ruby had set her alarm for eight anyway. She would have set her alarm for earlier so she could maybe run with Weiss, or at least hang out with her on the roof again, but… she'd kind of stayed up a _little _late reading a comic book.

In her defense, it was "The Conquests of the Grimm Reaper", and it was awesome. The Grimm Reaper was a famous huntress from when Ruby's _dad_ was little, and she was the first person to use a scythe as a weapon-two, actually! Crescent Rose was still cooler, of course, 'cause she's the best weapon ever, but the Grimm Reaper's weapons (Life and Death) were still really cool. Like maybe as cool as Harbinger, Uncle Qrow's weapon.

Well, not quite. But still, really cool!

She hopped down from her bed as Yang pushed herself up and rubbed her eyes, her golden, super long hair somehow _not _looking like a total mess. Somehow, Yang had a secret second semblance that made her immune to bed heads, and Ruby sorely needed to find a way to steal or copy that power.

Blake was still asleep, curled up hugging one of her pillows. It was pretty cute.

Weiss' bed was empty and impeccably made, but Ruby was expecting that now. The violin case was gone, too. Ruby wondered if Weiss had decided she liked the roof. Ruby hoped so-it would be pretty neat if Weiss liked her idea.

Last night had been pretty awesome for the two of them. Ruby really felt like Weiss was serious about wanting to be a good teammate and friend now, and Weiss had seemed to believe her when she promised to be the best team leader ever.

The part with Weiss crying had been really sad, and Ruby still didn't really understand why the paint had done that to her, but it turned out okay! It felt like Weiss had needed a good cry, and Ruby thought she'd actually made her partner feel better when it was over.

Then they'd studied for a bit, and Weiss explained the different acids used to purify the different colors of Dust. She'd also tried to explain the differences in Dust rounds and why some types of Dust need to be used in barrels of different widths, but Ruby hadn't really understood it. She'd tried! Really hard! But it was confusing. She didn't understand why they couldn't just make the rounds different sizes so one barrel could work with every Dust type. Something about the "integrity of the bonds" not holding up unless the crystal was a certain size.

Ruby's eyes glazed over just at the memory of that conversation.

'_No! You gotta learn this stuff, Ruby Rose!' _she chastised herself as she headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth. This was all super important and she needed to figure it out. She wasn't _quite _sure it mattered as long as she knew what kind of rounds Crescent Rose could fire (lightning and fire rounds), but durn it, they were teaching it for a reason!

Plus, Weiss seemed to know _everything_ about Dust and loved to talk about and explain it. So Ruby _had_ to get good at this stuff-the Princess of Dust was her partner! If Ruby couldn't learn it with Weiss' help then she was just dumb.

She really hoped she wasn't just dumb.

Trying and failing to fix her mess of a hairdo, she huffed in frustration. This wasn't going to work.

She hopped in the shower for a quick wash and to get her hair to stop being stupid. She almost accidently used Weiss' vanilla scented shampoo, but noticed what she was doing at the last second and grabbed her rose scented one instead.

There's no such thing as smelling _too_ much like roses.

After stumbling out of the shower and quickly drying off (not all to successfully drying her hair), she jumped into her jeans and threw on one of her several red t-shirts-this one had the cartoony little Grimm for Grimm Crush all fighting over a big chocolate chip cookie on it. Bouncing out of her bathroom, she found the room empty, and the door to Yang and Blake's bathroom closed with the sound of the shower quietly coming through.

Were they both in there? That would be kinda weird, right?

Just then, the bathroom door opened and Yang walked out, fully clothed and running a brush through her hair.

Oh, and Blake was showering while Yang changed. That made sense. Ruby and Yang did that all the time back home. But they were sisters! Then again, Yang and Blake were partners, so maybe it was okay for them, too.

Ruby wasn't really sure what the social rules for partners were. Was there a book somewhere? That might help her figure out how to act with Weiss.

"Want some breakfast, Rubes?" Yang asked as she placed her brush on the bookshelf.

"Yangcakes!" Ruby squeaked. Yang makes the best pancakes. She learned from Mom, the master pancakesmith herself.

Yang frowned and jokingly put her hands on her hips. "Ruby! Those are a special Saturday thing!"

"Ugh, fine," she groaned dramatically. "Guess I'll have to settle for stupid amounts of Admiral Munch." She knew she wouldn't have to. The cereal was only for when she was making and eating breakfast by herself. Yang always insisted on making sure Ruby had bacon or breakfast sausage or eggs when they were eating together-something about protein being super important for her muscles, as if she had any. Though at least she had more than Weiss.

Yang rolled her eyes. She walked back over to the bathroom door and cracked it open. "Blake, we'll be in the kitchen!" she called in.

"Okay!" Blake called back. "I'll be out soon!"

"You want some bacon and eggs?"

"Uh… Yes, please! Thank you!"

Yang pulled the door shut and gestured to Ruby. "Come on, Pipsqueak. Let's get some food in that belly."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered, skipping after her big sister.

As she pulled out the pans and bacon and eggs to start cooking, Yang glanced over at Ruby. "Weiss disappear on us again?"

Oh right! Weiss!

"I'll go see if she wants some breakfast too!"

She turned to run, but Yang's voice stopped her. "You know where she is?"

"I think so. Pretty sure she's on the roof."

That clearly confused her sister. "Why would she be on the roof?"

"To play the violin!"

The answer definitely didn't make Yang any less confused, but she shrugged and waved a spatula at her to indicate she should go. "Well go ask quick, so I know how much to make."

Ruby bolted, zooming through super cool extra-dimensional space until she got to the doors of the dorm. She had to drop her semblance there to push them open. The big downside of her power was that while she was hardly affected by the physical world while she was in Rose Form, she also couldn't really affect the physical world back either. It would take her a _ton_ of Aura to be able to push the door open.

Once she'd pushed it open she smiled at the faint sound of a violin singing above her head. She flew up to the roof.

Sure enough, Weiss was sitting in the same spot as the other day, eyes closed as she played her super pretty instrument. She also looked super pretty, wearing another sleeveless shirt that showed off her cute little shoulders and a mid length skirt that showed off her legs.

Ruby rushed over to her but stopped a good distance away, having learned that she shouldn't interrupt Weiss when she was playing music.

It didn't work, though. The air wave from her semblance carried too far and washed over Weiss, blowing the girl's ponytail back and making her open her eyes.

'_Darn it, Ruby Rose. Why didn't you just walk over?'_

She mentally prepared herself for another annoyed "Did you _have_ to interrupt me?", but none came. Instead, Weiss' lips curled up ever so briefly when her eyes landed on Ruby.

"Good morning."

Ruby beamed happily. Weiss was being nice! Hey, that rhymed.

She folded her hands in a conscious effort to look as prim and proper as Weiss. "Morning! I just wanted to ask if you'd like some breakfast! Yang's making bacon and eggs."

Weiss blinked, for some reason surprised at the offer. "I… yes, I'd love some. Is… Yang okay with making me breakfast?" She seemed worried, though Ruby had no idea why.

"Of course! Why wouldn't she be? Yang's, like, the Queen of Breakfast! You should try her pancakes."

Weiss pursed her lips in an ever-so-slight smile. "I'm more of a crepes girl," she said softly.

"A what girl?"

Weiss chuckled at that. "Nothing. Thank you for… thinking of me. I'd like a couple more minutes to play, though, if that's alright."

The way she phrased it, Weiss wasn't really _asking_ for a couple more minutes, but that was fine with Ruby anyway. "Of course! Come join us whenever you ready!"

Weiss gave her a friendly nod and lifted her violin back to her chin as Ruby darted back to Yang.

"One more order of yummy breakfast, please!" she declared as soon as she popped out of her semblance.

Yang gave her a nod and added more strips of bacon to the frying pan in front of her and pulled out another slice of bread to put in the toaster.

She skipped back to their room to grab "The Conquests of the Grimm Reaper", whistling the one string of notes from the song Weiss was playing as she went.

When she opened the door she found Blake with her back turned standing next to her bed putting a book down aND DEFINITELY NOT WEARING A SHIRT!

"Eep!" Ruby covered her eyes and tried to figure out what she was supposed to do.

"Uh, Ruby?"

"Oh, uh, hi Blake," she mumbled as she shuffled over to her bunk. "Just grabbing my comic book, don't mind me."

"Ruby, I'm wearing a bra. You're not going to implode from looking at me."

Ruby sheepishly lowered her hands, but she still didn't look at Blake. "Yeah, I know that!" she fired back indignantly.

She definitely wasn't sure about that.

Although it's true, Blake _was_ wearing a bra, so her "superweapons" as Yang called them were "holstered". Ruby didn't wear a bra 'cause she didn't have superweapons like Yang. Plus, they were mega uncomfortable.

She wondered if Weiss wore a bra. It would be rude to ask something like that, right?

Oh! She could just check the closet and see if Weiss had any, right?

Would that be rude, too? It would at least be less awkward than asking.

Ruby wasn't really sure why it even mattered, but she kinda hoped she wasn't the _only_ one on the team that didn't wear a bra. She was already pretty nervous about being so young compared to everyone else.

She shook herself out of that train of thought and grabbed her comic from under her comforter.

Should she make her bed? Her bed looked _awful_ right above Weiss', who'd tucked the sheets into the corners and everything.

Bah! Who cares? They were going to class soon anyway. Nobody would be walking into their bedroom to judge Ruby's slobiness.

Right?

"You can turn around now, ya goof," Blake said behind her.

Phew, Blake had put on a shirt now. It was kinda short, though, and left a little bit of her tummy visible, but it was pretty cute. It was a black t-shirt, with a cartoonish yellow cat licking a paw stamped on the front above block letters that said "Catitude".

Hehe. Catitude. Yang would like that.

"Books with breakfast," Blake commented, picking a book of her own from the giant stacks next to her bed. "I approve of your life choices, Ruby."

Ruby grinned widely at the compliment. "Mine has a super awesome huntress beating the crap out of Grimm and super corrupt even Mistrali government dudes! What about yours?"

Blake blinked as they headed toward the kitchen together. "Nothing quite as exciting as that, I'm afraid."

Ruby was undeterred. "Does it have ninjas, though? That dude on the cover looks like a ninja. Does he chop people up with a katana like a bad-a?"

Blake chuckled at her enthusiasm. "He _is_ a ninja. But it's more about his struggles conforming to the order he's part of and whether or not he should follow his heart and be with the girl he loves instead."

Oh. That sounded… super boring. "That sounds great!" she said instead.

Blake gave her a timid smile.

"Hey Blake!" Yang called out. "You want chewy or crispy bacon?"

"Chewy please!"

Yang nodded her head in approval. "Good choice. You're not one of those _crispy _heathens like Ruby."

"Look _blondie_," Ruby sneered, pointing her comic book at her sister, "bacon is _supposed_ to be crispy. Otherwise it's just glorified ham!"

"Isn't it just glorified ham anyway?" Blake asked.

"It's glori_ous _ham, Blakey-Blake," Yang correct, wagging her spatula at her partner.

"Blakey-Blake?" the girl asked skeptically. "Ruby has Pipsqueak, Cap, Peanut, Ruby-roo, Rubadub, and who knows what else, and I get _Blakey-Blake_?"

Yang stuck out her tongue. "Hey, I've had fifteen years to come up with those, okay?"

"Believe me, she needed _all _of that time to figure out how to be clever," Ruby teased, earning her a dish towel in the face.

"Quiet from the peanut gallery!"

Weiss walked into the room as they laughed at their own antics.

"Hey Weiss!" Ruby chirped.

Her partner gave her a small smile in response. "I'm gonna go put my violin up, one second," she said softly.

Ruby nodded and sat at the table, flipping open her comic book.

"Do you want any help, Yang?" Blake asked, slinking into the kitchen before Yang could answer.

"Nope!" Yang gave her a little shove back toward the table. "Go relax, I got this."

Blake hesitantly backed away and sat across from Ruby. She placed her book in front of her but kept watching Yang in the kitchen with a slight frown.

"Relax, Blake! That's an order!" Ruby commanded. "Yang is super awesome chef extraordinaire, and she _likes _cooking."

An arm wrapped around her as Yang hugged her from behind and kissed the top of her head. "Especially for my favorite baby sister!"

Ruby struggled to yank Yang's arm off of her, finally succeeding with a huff. "I'm your _only_ sister! And I'm not a baby!"

Yang chuckled as she walked back to the pans that were now filling the room with super delicious breakfast smells. "You gotta choose, Rubes. Do you want to be my favorite baby sister or just a regular, normal, boring sister?"

Ruby frowned and leaned back to look at Yang upside down. "But wouldn't I just be your favorite by default?"

"Nope!" Yang said as she turned a strip of bacon over. "That's not how that works!"

"Why not?"

"'Cause I said so!"

Darn. There was no arguing with Yang's "'cause I said so" proclamation. Her word was truth and law. Unless Dad disagreed. Then they had to listen to him. Mostly out of pity, though. Yang was still always right. The sisters had just agreed long ago to listen to Dad so he would feel like he was doing the parenting thing right.

The sacrifices they had to make to be good daughters, ya know?

Ruby shook her head and went back to her comics, conceding the argument. There were worse things in the world than being the favorite baby sister of the best big sister in the world.

Weiss came back in and sat down next to Ruby! She was all super rigid and proper, but she seemed like she was in a good mood.

"Hello again!" Ruby greeted her cheerily.

Weiss gave one of her small smiles. "Pyrrha, you look different! What happened?"

Ruby laughed at the reference. Weiss had made a joke! That was pretty neat!

"That smells delicious, Yang," Weiss commented, spinning to look at Yang but ducking her chin nervously when Yang looked back at her. What was that about?

"Thanks! I was thinking about buying the stinky bacon instead, but figured it wouldn't be as much of a hit."

Weiss frowned as Ruby groaned. Yang could be so weird sometimes. Weiss looked at Ruby questioningly, but Ruby just shook her head in a 'let it go' kinda way.

Yang was apparently still looking their way, because she laughed at the interaction. "Do you like your bacon chewy or crispy, Weiss? Keep in mind, there is a correct answer."

"Crispy, please," answered Weiss, making Ruby beam at her while Yang sighed in fake exasperation.

"I shoulda freakin' known," Yang grumbled melodramatically.

Hints of confusion flickered across Weiss' face. "Don't listen to her, Weiss. We know that crispy bacon is the _truth_." She reached over to pat Weiss' hand, but Weiss flinched away.

Right. Weiss is no-touchy. Woops. She'd been okay with a hug yesterday, but Ruby could tell it was 'cause she desperately needed one. But in general, no-touchy.

Weiss seemed to realize she'd kinda overreacted, though, because her eyes went soft with an unspoken apology and she put her hand back where it was. "Crispy bacon just tastes better," she argued quietly.

"Yeah!" agreed Ruby much more loudly, startling her partner and Blake, who'd gotten lost in her book while they were talking. "Plus, chewy bacon is basically just ham!" She was really confident in this assessment and thought it was really smart and profound.

Weiss didn't seem to agree, though. She squinted and pursed her lips in a really cute thinking face. "But bacon _is_ basically ham."

"Man! That's what Blake said too! Why can't you guys just let me have this?"

Yang chuckled as she ruffled her hair from behind, a plate laden with toast, scrambled eggs, and _chewy_ bacon in her other hand.

"Why can't _you_ just like the _correct_ kind of bacon and not make me slave over the stove for an extra minute?"

"Oh, no! Yang, I'm so-" Weiss started to say, but Yang waved her off.

"No worries, Weiss. Was just teasing. One order for Babe Belladonna!" She slid the plate over to Blake, who raised an eyebrow before shrugging lightly.

"I suppose it's better than 'Blakey-Blake'."

"You know what…" Yang grumbled, grabbing a strip of bacon from Blake's plate and shoving the whole thing in her mouth and shooting her partner a playful glare.

Blake laughed. "Fair," she conceded with a nod.

Yang headed back to the stove started setting up the other plates. "Just a little bit longer for you crispy heathens," she informed them.

Ruby rolled her eyes at her sister's continued barbs and turned to Weiss. "You ready for class today?"

Weiss smirked. "Of course. General History at ten with Professor Oobleck in Aberthy Hall, room seven."

Ruby blinked. "Wow, you just had all of that memorized, huh?"

Weiss tilted her head in what must be a princess version of a shrug. "I memorized the schedule when we got it. What confuses me is Wednesday and Friday. Do we just not have any classes those days? And when is the Huntsman Combat class with Professor Rustheart? Neither of them are on the schedule at all!"

Yang plopped two plates breakfast awesomeness down in front of Ruby and Weiss. Squealing in delight, Ruby immediately started digging in, starting with her _deliciously crunchy_ bacon.

"Oh wow, this is a lot," Weiss whispered.

"Don't worry about it!" Ruby reassured her. "Whatever you can't finish, I definitely can!"

Weiss turned to her with an amused almost-grin. "How _do_ you fit so much food in there?"

Ruby shrugged with a big smile as she munched on some bacon. "Dad says my semblance probably gives me a really high metabolicism. Yang thinks my stomach's just a black hole."

Weiss frowned and opened her mouth to say something, but Yang got a word in first.

"Yes, she means metabolism," she chuckled.

Weiss nodded and turned back to her food. She picked up her bacon so weirdly! She pinched it with the verrrrry edges of two fingers like she didn't actually want to touch it. Ruby bet if it was possible, Weiss would be eating bacon with a fork. _Was_ it possible? Probably not.

"Isn't this Rustheart's first year teaching?" Blake asked between bites, picking up Weiss' conversation. "Maybe he just, like, forgot to put himself on the schedule."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "You think a professor in the most famous and acclaimed huntsman academy in Remnant would just _forget_ to put his class on the schedule?"

Blake shrugged.

"I probably would," Ruby confessed as Yang sat down across from her, next to Blake. "Though if I were the history professor I just wouldn't put my class on the schedule on purpose to spare the innocent children from torture."

That drew a laugh from Yang, so Ruby was proud of herself.

Blake scrunched up her eyebrows, though. "What's wrong with history?"

Ruby took a moment to figure out how to respond. History was boring as all heck, but she didn't want to say that if Blake liked it.

"Nothing!... It's just boring as all heck."

Wait, she did that wrong.

"Hmph!" Blake protested with a mouthful of toast. "_I_ like it. I think it's important to know where we've come from. It shows us how much we can improve."

Ruby didn't really understand what she meant by that. She and Yang already knew where they were from-Patch! History class definitely wasn't about learning about Patch, that was for sure.

"I think it's pretty cool to learn about all the old battles and heroes and stuff," Yang added. "The rest of it's kinda boring though."

Ruby nodded. That was true. Historic battles were pretty neat. It was kinda sad to think about how many people died in them, but learning about the battle strategies and the things the people did in the fights was really cool!

"Do you like history, Weiss?" she asked her partner.

Weiss lowered the fork full of scrambled eggs she was about to eat and thought about the question-she seemed to be really thoughtful like _all_ the time. Ruby figured thinking so much about everything must be exhausting. Maybe _that's_ why Weiss was so grumpy all the time! Too much thinking!

"It's not my favorite subject," she answered after a moment. "It doesn't have a whole lot of practical applications to make us better fighters. It's still useful and important to know, though. _And_," she turned to Ruby with a scolding squint, "you should still pay attention in class even if you don't like the subject."

"I will!" Ruby pouted, doing her best to look offended. The insinuation! The audacity! The pr-

Yeah it was a fair thing to say. She had already been looking forward to doodling. But no! She was going to be an awesome team leader, and that meant paying attention in class!

… Even if it _was_ history.

Ugh.

"Watch out, Rubes," Yang warned her. "Professor Schnee's gonna slap you with a detention if you don't."

"Like Ruby would sit still through a detention anyway," Blake smirked.

"True," Yang nodded.

"Hey!" Ruby protested. When did this become a Bash on Ruby Breakfast?

"We _could_ always use the punishment Dad uses when Ruby misbehaves…" Yang trailed off, grinning at her sister.

Ruby scrunched her nose, making a Super Angry face, and pointed a bacon strip at Yang. "Don't. You. Dare." If Yang told them Dad's super evil, totally over the top punishment, she was done for.

Yang gave her a smug grin and leaned back in her chair. "Don't worry. I wouldn't just give that information away for _free_."

"Let me guess," Blake pondered, "take away her cookies for a day?"

"How did-what?! No! Of cou-psssh, that's ridiculous!" Ruby sputtered.

HOW DID SHE KNOW?!

From the pleased smirk on her face, Ruby could tell Blake knew she'd hit the jackpot, and Yang laughing her stupid butt off didn't help.

Ruby turned to Weiss, whose lips were curled in amusement. "Please don't take my cookies," Ruby begged, giving her partner the best set of puppy dog eyes ever.

Weiss' eyes flickered as she took in Ruby's expression, and she opened and closed her mouth as she floundered to figure out what to say. "I would never," she replied softly after a long moment that was quiet but for Yang's dumb chuckling. "That would be cruel and unusual."

Ruby beamed at her partner and turned back to her sister. "Ha!" She crossed her arms in victory.

Yang just shook her head. "Guess that means I'll just have to take them myself."

"Yang-uh!"

They lapsed into a comfortable silence after a brief giggle, enjoying their super awesome breakfast. Then a thought popped into Ruby's head.

"Oh! Speaking of cookies!" She ran over to the cabinet Weiss had made her store the box of remaining cookies (apparently Weiss didn't want her keeping it next to her bed because of "ants" or something). "Weiss got me the best cookies ever yesterday, and I saved some for you guys!"

She brought the box over and opened it ceremoniously, placing it on the table with a flourish to reveal the four pink and white pastries of heavenly bliss that survived Ruby's conquest last night. Yang better appreciate the sacrifice Ruby had made _not_ eating all the rest of the cookies. It took absurd amounts of self control-they were _awesommmmme_! Strawberries and cookies were tied for the best foods ever, and strawberry cookies were just the absolute super best!

Just thinking about what a great gift this was made Ruby want to give Weiss another hug, but Weiss probably wouldn't like that. Which was kinda weird when Ruby thought about it. Who doesn't love hugs?

"Wow, those look great," Yang remarked, pulling the box over to her to inhale the smell of strawberry deliciousness. She glanced at Weiss. "What was the occasion?"

Weiss kinda stammered and looked down at her hands and said something really quietly about olive branches or something. Yang didn't seem to hear her any better, 'cause she frowned and leaned forward.

"What?"

Ruby decided to jump to the rescue here. Clearly Weiss was nervous for some reason, but Ruby would save the day!

"She was just being the best partner ever!" she chirped, plopping back into her seat and getting started on the last of her breakfast. "And she wants to go clothes shopping with me this weekend so we can look awesome together!"

Yang's face went dead. "That's not happening."

Weiss' eyes shot back up. "No, Yang, it's okay. I'm going to p-"

"Like _hell_ you are!" Yang growled, leaning forward aggressively while her eyes suddenly darkened.

Weiss jerked back, clearly scared at the sudden turn.

"Yang, what the heck?!" Ruby cried out, leaning to get between her sister and her partner. They'd been having such a nice breakfast and suddenly Yang went all supervillain! Blake was leaning away from Yang now wide eyed and alarmed at the fireball that had just erupted beside her. (Seriously, when Yang gets angry she gets _hot_.)

Her sister's eyes met hers. "You're not going to go shopping for stupid, overpriced clothes that you never wanted before three days ago so Ice Queen here can throw her money at you and buy your friendship."

Weiss shot to her feet, her chair loudly sliding backwards across the tile floor. No words came out of her mouth though, she just glared at Yang and took deep, heavy, angry breaths. After about five seconds of silence she lowered her gaze and slid her plate to Ruby.

"You can have the rest of this, Ruby. I've lost my appetite." She turned to walk back to their room. She paused for a moment and quietly added, "Thank you for breakfast, Yang."

Yang's eyes flashed angrily at that like she thought Weiss was mocking her or something.

"Yang, what is _wrong_ with you?!" Ruby almost shouted as Weiss walked away. Why was she getting so mad at Weiss for being _nice_?

Her sister rounded on her. "That's _enough_, Ruby."

"But why are you-"

"_Stop_."

Angry, confused tears sprang into Ruby's eyes and she tried furiously to blink it away. "Stop making friends? I thought you _wanted_ me to make my own friends here!"

Yang shoved a strip of bacon in her mouth and chewed with a scowl. "Not with _her._"

"Yang, she's my partner! I _have_ to be friends with her!"

"You shouldn't have to change yourself and what you like to be friends with someone, Ruby. This is what I was afraid would happen. You're too young and impressionable and you feel like you have to work hard to make friends when you're great just the way you are!"

Now Ruby was _really_ confused. She was mad at Yang, and Yang was mad at her, but Yang was _complimenting_ her?

Wait…

"You think I'm too young to be here?"

Hanging her head, Yang sighed. "No, I didn't mean that, Ruby. I just mean… you get too eager to make friends with everyone, even people that don't deserve you being so nice to them like Weiss."

Ruby frowned at that. Weiss totally deserved people being nice to her! If anything, the reason she always seemed so sad was probably because people _weren't_ nice to her.

"But Weiss is awesome!" Ruby simplified, not trusting herself to say complicated things and not mess it up.

"Really?" Yang asked skeptically and a tiny bit sarcastically. "After she yelled at you twice in one day, once in front of our entire class before storming out of the room, you think she's awesome?"

"Yeah!" Ruby pointed at the cookies laying on the table (still looking delicious). "She got me those to say sorry for that. She said she was wrong before and she thinks I can be a great leader and she wants to be the best teammate ever!"

Yang crossed her arms. "She's said she wants to be a team before. You know, _before_ she blew a gasket at you in the middle of a classroom."

"She _meant_ it this time, Yang. And I believe her."

Yang rolled her eyes. "You believe everybody, Ruby."

"That doesn't make me wrong!" Ruby was on the verge of shouting again.

This sucked! What was she supposed to do when her sister hated her partner and they were all on a team together?

This was something a good leader would figure out. So Ruby had to figure it out.

"Blake, what do you think?" she asked. There _was_ a fourth voice on the team, and she should speak up too.

Blake clearly didn't like having the spotlight on her, though. She glanced nervously back and forth between Ruby and Yang. "I think… that I'm going to go check on Weiss."

She slipped from her chair as Yang sighed. When Ruby got up to follow her, Blake placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her head.

"Let me try talking to her first?"

Ruby pouted a bit but nodded. She wanted to go make Weiss feel better and apologize for Yang being mean and dumb, but maybe it would be good to let Blake talk to her. Blake seemed very… wisdomous.

Blake left and Ruby crossed her arms and glared at her sister, doing her very darn best try to make Yang feel terrible with her eyes.

Yang didn't really seemed phased. She met Ruby's glare with level eyes.

They sat there in silence for a long time. Like, at least five seconds. Maybe even six. It was starting to get really uncomfortable and antsy, and Ruby squirmed. She grabbed the box of super awesome friendship cookies and pulled them over to her.

"You don't get to have any of these until you apologize," she grumbled.

Yang rolled her eyes. "I don't care about her stupid cookies, Ruby."

Stupid? Ruby huffed. "Well you should! They're awesome! And only for nice people." She took a big bite of one to accentuate her point.

Hnnnngh, so yummy!

"A shame that Weiss can't have any of her own cookies then," Yang muttered.

"Yang!"

"What?"

"She _is_ nice. She knows she was being mean before and apologized and made up for it."

Yang looked at her like she was dumb. "And the next time she decides to be a massive jerk to you are you gonna just let her buy you something that doesn't cost or mean anything to her at all and all will be forgiven?"

"That's not at all what happened, Yang."

"No?"

"No!" Ruby leaned forward and tried to show how much she meant what she was saying with her eyes. "She's a nice person. She's a nice person that I don't think has had very many nice people in her life, so she doesn't really know how to _act_ nice. But she's _trying_. Isn't that what counts? Just like we're trying to learn to be better huntresses, Weiss is also trying to learn how to be a better person."

Whoa, that was deep. Must be cookie wisdom. Ruby always felt smarter when she was eating cookies.

Yang seemed to be wavering, her forehead creasing in thought at Ruby's words. And Ruby knew exactly what she needed to say to drive home her argument.

"Mom and Dad always told us to be kind to others, not because _they're_ good people, but because _we _are. If you won't believe me that Weiss is a good person, at least just be one yourself."

It worked. Yang sighed and slumped in her chair, the last traces of red leaving her eyes. "Fine, Ruby," she murmured in defeat. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should give her a chance."

"I know I'm right!" Ruby chirped. Probably not the best thing to say, but she was really proud of herself for winning an argument against Yang. She couldn't actually remember the last time that had happened. But she'd never _wanted_ to win an argument so badly! Weiss was worth fighting for.

"But _I_ don't need to hear that. Weiss does." She pointed towards their room. "Go apologize and make things right."

Yang scowled and crossed her arms again, sinking further down into her chair.

"Go!" Ruby repeated. "Right now, _you're_ being the mean one." That got Yang to look at her with sad, surprised eyes. "And don't think I won't call Dad and tell him what a big, fat jerky-jerk you're being to our teammate. Now as team leader I'm ordering you to-"

"Fine!" Yang yelled, throwing her arms in the air and standing. "Fine, Ruby. I'll apologize. Just stop yapping at me, alright?"

Ruby pumped her fist in triumph. Operation Get-Weiss-and-Yang-to-be-Friends was green across the board!

That was a saying, right?

Ruby smiled. First getting Weiss to open up and be friends, now getting Yang to chill and apologize, which she _never_ does? Maybe she wasn't so bad at this team leader thing after all.


	9. Seeding 1-9

**Hey all! Sorry for the really long delay and the short chapter. My life is currently a mess right now. Hopefully I should be settled into a good rhythm in soon. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Weiss?" came Blake's muffled voice, followed by two soft knocks on the bathroom door. "Can I come in?"

Weiss didn't respond. She didn't want to talk to anybody right now. She just wanted to be alone. She thought Blake of all people would understand that.

With a small squeak she heard the bathroom door open. "Weiss?" Blake called out. "You in here?"

Weiss held back a scoff. Of course she wasn't. A Schnee doesn't hide in a bathroom.

Hiding in a closet, though? That was okay.

Dreading the sound of footsteps getting closer, Weiss looked up to see the shadows of Blake's feet in front of the closet door.

_*knock knock*_

"Weiss?"

Still, Weiss didn't respond. She wanted to tell Blake to go away, to leave her alone, but… that would be mean, wouldn't it? She was trying really hard to not be mean. Like just now with Yang, she'd really wanted to say something back at the arrogant blonde, to tell her…

'_No. Stop it, Weiss.'_

Besides, responding to Blake would require her to use her voice, something she wasn't totally sure she could do right now.

The handle turning quietly, the door creaked open slowly. "Weiss?"

From the silhouette of her teammate, it was hard for Weiss to see Blake's expression, but Blake very clearly saw her, despite the closet lights being turned off. She was tucked into the corner of the small room, arms around her knees.

"Hey," Blake said quietly. "Can I join you?" She gestured to the floor next to Weiss.

Weiss still couldn't find her voice, so she nodded almost imperceptibly.

Crossing the space between them with two long strides, Blake sat and leaned back against the well beside her teammate. She gave Weiss a light bump on her shoulder with her own.

"You doing okay?"

Weiss huffed. Was she okay? No, not at all.

Being accused of trying to _buy_ Ruby's friendship? That _wasn't_ what she was doing. She'd just gone through a crap ton of emotional turmoil and introspection to come to the realization that she should be friends with Ruby, with her entire team. She was _trying_ to be nice to Ruby, and she had a lot of money that she was happy to spend on things to make Ruby happy. How was that a bad thing?

Right?

_Was_ she just trying to buy Ruby's friendship? When she'd been trying to figure out how to apologize to her partner, she _had_ thought "Schnees are good at buying things."

But… if her intentions were good, what did it matter? How else was she supposed to make friends? What else did she have?

She didn't even know what she was supposed to make of the fact that Ruby didn't want nice clothes until she met Weiss. Didn't that mean Weiss was being a positive influence?

And when Yang had slammed her hands onto the table and growled at her out of nowhere… Weiss couldn't help but feel like she was sitting across from her father as he flew into a rage in the dining hall back home. They were such different people-her father's anger was a much colder, much more calculated and cutting thing-but the mannerisms were scarily similar.

Weiss hated that, in that moment, she'd been scared.

A slight movement from Blake pulled Weiss from her thoughts as she realized her teammate was waiting for an answer.

"I'm fine," Weiss croaked weakly.

She was fine. She was always fine. She was a Schnee. She _had_ to be fine.

It was nearly impossible to see Blake's expression in the low light coming in from the bathroom, but her amber eyes almost freakishly glowed, and Weiss could tell that Blake didn't believe her at all.

Blake sighed. "I don't think you're trying to buy anyone's friendship," she stated simply.

Weiss gave her an appreciative nod, but didn't say anything. Blake clearly had more to say.

Blake's hands fidgeted nervously, and Weiss realized that Blake probably wasn't any better at these kinds of talks than she was. But she was still here, still trying. That was nice.

"I don't really know Yang too well, but-"

"She's a bully," Weiss cut her off. Her anger at the ignorant blonde came rushing into her veins with an ice cold frigidity.

Blake shook her head. "I don't think so. I just think she's… very protective of Ruby, and she doesn't know you well enough to understand you mean well."

Weiss raised her eyebrow at the girl beside her.

Clearly, Blake understood her meaning. She shrugged lightly. "Okay, I don't know you too well either. But… I believe you mean well."

Weiss dipped her head. "Thank you," she whispered. It was another small vote of confidence from a relative stranger that she wasn't sure she deserved, but that she was grateful for nonetheless.

Blake nodded. "I just think you need to make Yang see that, too." She turned to Weiss, leaning forward to try to make eye contact that the heiress refused to give. "Talk to her."

Weiss scoffed at the idea. "You think she'll listen to anything I have to say?" she asked, disbelieving.

Another light shrug. "I think she will. But we won't know until you try. And you haven't yet."

Weiss bristled at the implication that this situation was somehow her fault. Yang was the only one responsible for her hatred and cruelty.

"_Try_," Blake stressed again. "You think Ruby is a nice person, right?"

Weiss sighed and nodded. Yes, Ruby was an incredibly sweet person. Foolish, immature, irresponsible, but she was also the most wholesome and genuine person Weiss had ever met.

"Well Yang and Ruby grew up together," Blake continued. "And from what I can tell, Yang basically helped raise Ruby. So she must be a nice person too, right?"

Weiss turned away from her teammate and laid her cheek on her knee. The logic was there, but she couldn't see it being true at all. Where Ruby's faults were in her naivety, Yang was violent, rude… unhinged.

And she certainly wouldn't listen to Weiss.

"Hey." Blake nudged her shoulder, prompting Weiss to turn and meet her eyes. "She's your teammate too, Weiss. You've figured out how to make things up with Ruby. Now you just need to do the same with her hotheaded sister."

Weiss smiled tightly at that. "Do I have to make amends with _you _after that?"

Blake let out a little laugh. "We haven't had any problems yet."

'_Yet?'_ Weiss worried about what that implied. Was Blake just assuming that they'd have problems eventually? Knowing herself… yeah, Weiss figured that might be fair.

_*knock knock*_

Both girls' heads jerked up to see Yang peeking around the open bathroom door toward the closet, squinting into the dark space in Weiss' general area. "Weiss, you in there?"

To her dismay, Weiss found she'd lost her voice again. Blake seemed to realize this, because she responded in the heiress' place.

"Yeah, she's here."

Yang rubbed an elbow nervously. "Can… can we talk, Weiss?"

Weiss wanted to stay in her corner and never talk to anybody ever again, but Blake turned to her with her eyebrows raised expectantly. Sighing, Weiss pushed herself to her feet and slowly crept over next to the doorway, leaning sideways so her face was half revealed behind the frame.

She opened her mouth to say something, but words continued to fail her.

Something about the way Weiss looked right now made a flash of guilt cross Yang's face. That was fair. Weiss probably looked pretty pathetic hiding behind a wall. She just… couldn't unsee those burning red eyes.

"Weiss, please come out," Yang said softly. "I'm… I'm sorry. Can we talk? I wo-I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."

A hand rested on Weiss' shoulder as Blake came up behind her, though she instinctively flinched away from the physical contact. Blake pulled her hand back quickly, but stayed behind her. Weiss supposed her teammate was trying to show her some support, but all it made her feel was trapped and surrounded.

Then Ruby poked her head into the bathroom. After a brief moment of looking around, the girl met Weiss' eyes and flashed her a big smile.

Weiss did her best to return the smile and took a hesitant step toward her partner.

Yang noticed the exchange and backed into the bedroom, leaving Ruby standing alone beckoning Weiss over.

"Hey," Ruby almost whispered as her partner stepped to her side, hands clasped in front of her and fidgeting nervously.

Weiss glanced over at Yang, who'd set herself down at the edge of Blake's bed and was staring down at her hands like she'd never seen them before. "Is she going to eat me?" she asked the somber-but-smiling brunette beside her.

Ruby giggled. "No, silly! You're not a piece of bacon!... Are you?" She poked Weiss' side jokingly.

Weiss rolled her eyes and looked at the girl beside her. She was fairly certain she had set her impassive mask back on, but when Ruby met her eyes she frowned and looked down at her feet.

"For real, though. She's calmed down. And I gave her a patented Ruby Scolding about how much of a jerky-jerk she's being, so she's gonna _stay _calm, promise."

There was a lot Weiss wanted to question there-_patented_ Ruby Scolding? Jerky-jerk? The idea that _anybody_ could promise that Yang would stay calm?

Instead, she nodded, trusting that Ruby wouldn't send her to get beaten up by a dragon-child when they'd just started getting along. She walked into the bedroom and sat down on her bed opposite Yang, inspecting her crossed fingers much like the blonde across from her.

Ruby and Blake followed her, Blake crossing the room and sitting at her desk as her eyes flicked between Weiss and Blake, Ruby bouncing in and inviting herself to sit beside Weiss on Weiss' bed.

Yang took a breath and looked up, meeting Weiss' eyes for an instant before switching over to Ruby. "Alright, Munchkin. Scram."

Ruby's eyes went wide. "What? No!"

"_Yes._" Yang demanded. "Go finish your breakfast."

"No!"

Yang closed her eyes in exasperation. "Go finish your breakfast or you're not getting any Super Special Saturday Yangcakes this _year_."

Weiss was amused to see that the threat gave her partner pause, her face scrunching up as she weighed her options. It really did seem like the way to Ruby's heart was through her stomach.

"Fine," she huffed. She stood and stomped to the door and yanked it open. "Weiss," she said, turning, "if she's anything other than super nice and sweet you just let me know and I'll come beat her up for you."

Weiss couldn't help but smile at the mental image of Ruby beating her fists fruitlessly against Yang's abs. She nodded to her partner, and Ruby marched off with a huff.

Yang turned to her own partner. "Blake, can you make sure she doesn't try to drop some eaves on us while we're talking?"

Blake's eyes widened as they darted worriedly between the other two girls in the room. Weiss felt the same. Just her and Yang in a room together? She wasn't entirely certain she felt… safe.

Myrtenaster was leaning up against the bookshelf next to her bed, just within arm's reach. That was reassuring.

Blake eventually nodded and stood, following Ruby out the door.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Weiss fidgeted some more. "Getting rid of witnesses?" she asked, trying to joke like she expected Yang would. Jokes were good, right?

From the pained look Yang gave her, she was definitely wrong.

'_Damn it, Weiss. Don't try to make jokes. Not with her._'

Silence settled back over them.

Weiss ran her fingers through her ponytail.

Yang spun the bracelets that housed her gauntlets in circles.

Weiss slipped one foot in and out of its heel, using the other foot as leverage.

Yang cleared her throat. "So who talks first?" she asked, shattering the silence.

Weiss gestured lamely with her hand for Yang to speak. She didn't like having to have important conversations like this without getting time to prepare herself and figure out what she wanted to say. She'd always had "talking points" prepared whenever she spoke to her father. She'd been able to prepare herself before apologizing to Ruby last night.

She wasn't ready for this.

Yang sighed and looked back down at her hands. "I'm glad you're getting along with Ruby better."

Weiss nodded. Not 'you and Ruby are getting along better,' she noted. Yang had said 'you're getting along with Ruby better.' It hadn't been a mutual issue. Weiss had been the problem.

Yang ran a hand through her hair and continued. "And it was kind of you to get her cookies. She likes cookies." The simple and glaringly obvious statement made Weiss frown. "But she doesn't like clothes. She's never cared about fashion." Yang huffed a laugh. "She still wears the cloak Mom gave her seven years ago."

Weiss felt her heart tighten at hearing that bit of information. She'd thought that Ruby's infatuation with her cloak was frankly ridiculous, but now? Weiss couldn't really fault a little girl for wanting to carry a memory of her dead mother with her wherever she went.

"Ruby's young," Yang said. "She thinks that because she swings her scythe and snipes like a pro that she's all grown up, but she's still just a kid. I mean, you see it. All you have to do to get her to do something is threaten to take away her cookies!"

Weiss' lips curled up on one side and she nodded.

"And she tends to… forget who she is when she tries to make friends. She tries too hard to be someone the other person will like." Yang met Weiss eyes, something close to sadness lurking in her gaze. "So when she asked for clothes like yours… When she said you wanted to take her shopping… I blew up. It feels like you're trying to change my sister into somebody she's not and I overreacted. I'm sorry." She looked back down at her hands. "I never meant to scare you."

Weiss took a deep breath, surprised at how remorseful and torn Yang looked. She let the air out slowly and worked to find her voice.

"May I speak?" she asked quietly.

Yang nodded quickly at her, looking relieved that Weiss was finally saying something.

"I… I don't know how to make friends, Yang." Weiss frowned at her words, at the admission that she was less than perfect, but it was true. "I've never really had any."

Yang's eyes went wide at her words, but she stayed quiet.

"I knew a couple of other kids of business partners of my father or kids of security guards, but… none of them were really my friends. I don't… I don't have anything good to offer. I'm not funny like you. I'm not sweet like Ruby. I'm not insightful and helpful like Blake. I… I just have money."

Yang frowned. "You're more than you're fortune, Weiss."

Weiss huffed, annoyed that Yang thought she knew anything about her from the three days they'd known each other. "Yes, but none of it's _good_. I'm not someone that anybody would ever _want_ to be friends with… Anybody but Ruby…"

Once again, she was glad that Ruby had ended up as her partner. She'd hated it when it first happened, but in just three days she'd come to the realization that if it had been anyone else she would probably have ended up miserable.

Yang's expression softened at Weiss' words. She opened her mouth to say something, but Weiss needed to say more. She barreled forward.

"And I'm not trying to _change_ Ruby. I just… she expressed an interest in clothing, something I like, and I wanted to share that with her. And it would go both ways! I'm happy to share the things she likes with her, too."

Yang raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Really?"

Okay, that wasn't fair. Weiss eyes steeled into a glare at the insult. Wasn't she showing that she was trying? Why did she deserve this skepticism?

Yang's dubious expression didn't change, though. "You're willing to join her in her silly eating contests? Play video games and board games with her? Watch her superhero action movies with her? Jam out to her music with her when she's supposed to be doing her homework? Dive into the endless pit of her comic books to try to hold conversations with her about them? Geek out about weapons with her for hours on end?"

That… sounded awful, but…

"If that's what it takes."

Yang's eyes widened in surprise at that response before she nodded to herself and looked back down at her hands.

Another long silence stretched between the two girls.

"Fine," Yang said.

Weiss frowned. "F-fine?"

Yang straightened up and met Weiss' eyes again. "Yeah. Fine. Honestly, I don't know if I should believe that you're so… eager to be good to my sister." Weiss flinched at that, both offended and disappointed. "But Ruby believes you, and I trust her. So… I won't get in the way."

Weiss blinked in surprise.

"So… I can take her shopping?"

Yang pressed her knuckles into her thighs and leaned forward in a strange display of nerves. "You promise you don't mind paying? You're not gonna hold it over her later?"

Weiss bristled. "Of course not!"

Yang nodded quickly. "Okay, okay. Good. Then… yes. Just… could you bring me back the receipts?"

Unsure of why Yang would make such a request, Weiss nodded hesitantly.

Yang waved a hand when she noticed Weiss' confusion. "It's just for my own peace of mind. I just want to know how much you spend on her."

Nodding more forcefully this time, Weiss cleared her throat. "Sure, I can do that."

"And Weiss?" Yang's eyes met hers again, the regret from earlier back in full force. "I really am sorry for scaring you. I… I know I've got a bit of a temper, but that doesn't make what I did okay. If I ever do that again, just… call me out on it, okay?"

Weiss nodded. "Thank you," she whispered. It must have been difficult for Yang to admit something like that, just as it had been hard for Weiss to admit she'd never had a real friend.

Yang clapped her hands on her knees. "Well-"

*_BANG!*_

Both girls jumped as the door slammed open and they were showered with rose petals. Ruby materialized next to Weiss, her cheeks crammed full of food.

"Mm mhmm mff mm-hmm!" she declared to Yang, putting her hands on her hips proudly.

Yang failed to hold back a smirk. "What was that, Ruby-Roo? We don't speak chipmunk."

Ruby held up a finger and closed her eyes, lowering her chin as she chewed furiously. Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty.

Blake slipped back into the room and shot Yang and Weiss an apologetic grimace. "Sorry, I tried to catch her but… she's fast."

Ruby gasped loudly after she finally swallowed. "Ah! Finished my breakfast!" She turned to Weiss. "Here to beat up the jerky-jerk for you if I need to!"

Weiss pursed her lips in a grin while Yang huffed. "Gee, Ruby," Yang complained, "should I be offended that you're so willing to _try_ to beat me up?"

Ruby raised her fists up in an adorable fighting stance, setting her mouth in a determined line. "Do or do not, Yang Xiao Long. There is no try."

Yang rolled her eyes. "Sit down, you ridiculous sugar addict. We're fine… I think?" She directed the last statement at Weiss, who nodded eagerly.

Yes, they were… better, at least. Yang had clearly said she doesn't believe that Weiss was actually interested in being a good friend and teammate, but she was willing to give Weiss a chance. That was all Weiss needed. She was determined to be the best teammate ever.

Ruby looked at Weiss questioningly for confirmation. Weiss gave her what she hoped was a warm smile. "We're good, Ruby."

The brunette beamed. "So we can go shopping this weekend?"

Weiss nodded again. "Though I've been told I'm only allowed to buy you yellow clothes," she joked.

"Wha-?" Ruby whined as Yang erupted with laughter.

"Alright, Weiss," the blonde said, standing, "that was good. Now come on, babes, let's get going. Don't want to be late for class, right?"

Weiss smiled and stood as well. That joke had been okay! That was… neat.

Ruby did a goofy little hop. "Alright Teeeeam RWBY! To class!" She jabbed a finger into the air, turning the declaration into an official order.

As they headed to class together, Yang walking beside Blake with Weiss and Ruby trailing behind them, Ruby leaned over and bumped Weiss' shoulder.

"You were just joking about the yellow thing, right?" she whispered.

Weiss glanced over and then quickly turned to look back ahead, trying to hide her pleased smirk. "I don't know, was I?"

She chanced another brief look at Ruby to see the girl's eyes going wide. "I don't know!" the girl whispered, sounding far too serious and worried. "I can't tell!"

Weiss laughed at that. "Yes, Ruby, I was kidding," she reassured her partner.

Ruby visibly sagged her shoulders in relief. "Phew. Having to wear Yang Yellow would suck!"

"_You_ suck!" Yang called over her shoulder, announcing that she could hear them perfectly fine.

Ruby made a face and stuck her tongue out at her sister's back.

"You should take away her cookies," Weiss stage-whispered to her partner.

Ruby giggled. "No, that wouldn't do anything. Dad takes away Ember Celica when she's bad, or her SongBox, or her scroll so she can't game, or if she's _really_ bad-"

"Uh uh uh uh!" Yang cut her off, turning to walk backwards and waving her arms wildly. "Nope! That doesn't happen. None of it! Not a thing. At all."

Weiss shared a sly grin with Ruby. Good to know the raging fire dragon had weaknesses too.

Ruby scratched the back of her head. "Hey, Weiss?"

Weiss smiled lightly. "Yes, Ruby?"

"Where are we going again?"

* * *

Weiss had assumed that Ruby would mentally check out during History the same way she had for their previous two classes, but she was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn't the case. Perhaps it was because Ruby had well and truly decided to throw herself into her studies, though Weiss suspected it was more due to the fact that Professor Oobleck was basically an older, taller, male version of the girl-excited, overly energetic, and loud.

He talked so fast Weiss was tempted to just abandon any attempt at note-taking whatsoever. As he lectured he would "pace", which looks more like him darting from one side of the room to the other so fast it was practically teleporting, pausing to machine gun fire some words at the class, and then darting back across the room.

As if all of that wasn't enough, the professor had a giant thermos filled with what smelled like coffee, and there was a giant coffee machine and pot plugged in at his desk that he used to refresh his supply whenever he ran out (which happened alarmingly, almost freakishly fast).

Ruby sat enraptured, leaning forward with her chin propped in her hands, her eyes flashing wide in excitement every time Professor Oobleck zipped around or raised his (already incredibly loud) voice to accentuate a point. She wasn't taking any notes-to be honest, Weiss wasn't even sure Ruby was registering the words the professor was saying-but at least she wasn't doodling either.

The curriculum for this semester seemed to be pretty standard: starting with pre-kingdom history, followed by the formation of the four kingdoms, then the going into the beginning of the faunus conflict and the struggle for faunus rights (it seemed this school was full of fools that thought the violent animals deserve rights), and ending on the Great War. Oobleck's syllabus involved a lot of reading-mostly from the three textbooks he'd assigned the class, but some extra passages from other sources as well. Apparently they were going to have to read excerpts from a published diary of some faunus slave from a hundred years ago that Blake got all excited about because she'd already read it for some reason.

When the last five minutes of class came around Weiss' hand was aching from writing at the ridiculous pace she'd needed to keep up with Professor Oobleck. Luckily, the lecture ended early as the professor gave an announcement.

"Bytheway, class! ProfessorRustheartwantedmetoclearsomethingupforyou!" He cleared his throat and blinked behind his desk to look at a paper. "Heapologizesforyour…. Incompleteschedules! HefailedtoturninhisclasstimeblockstoProfessorGoodwitchbeforethedeadline, sotheydidn'tgetprintedonyourschedules!"

Blake turned and gave Weiss a satisfied smirk at having been right that Weiss returned with a narrow-eyed glare.

"YourWednesdayclasswithhimwillmeetfromnoontosixinthelobbyoftheBattleCenter! He'llgiveyouthetimeandplacetomeetonFridayattheendofclasstomorrow!"

Yang raised her hand, blurting out her question before Professor Oobleck had even noticed that she had one. "We're meeting with him twice a week?" she asked.

The professor pointed at Yang as if to call on her for her raised hand but then quickly dropped it. "Yes! WednesdaywillbeDirectedCombatTraining! FridayswillbeTeamBattlePractices!"

Team Battle Practices? Did that mean the freshmen teams would be fighting each other? Would Weiss get to try to match up against Pyrrha?

"Awwwwesoooooome," Ruby breathed out.

Professor Oobleck clapped once, startling Weiss. "Alrightclass! That'sitfortoday! RemembertoreadchapteroneinbothRemnant:AHistory_and_AStudyoftheFourKingdoms! Seeyounextweek!"

The sixteen students all filed out of the small lecture hall, Ruby skipping ahead of her team happily as they headed toward their room. "Professor Oobleck is so awesome!" she whooped, turning to skip backwards and look at the rest of them.

Yang chuckled at her little sister. "Why is that? Do his energy and coffee obsession remind you of a certain hyperactive cookie addict you know?"

"Yep!" Ruby replied cheerily, not at all phased by the apt description of her. "Do you think he ever even sleeps? Do you think he has coffee instead of blood in his veins? Did you see he doesn't take cream _or_ milk _or_ sugar? How does he even drink that stuff?! It's so nasty!"

Weiss rolled her eyes, deciding to not even bother trying to respond to the onslaught of silly questions.

"Forget all that noise!" Yang said with a wave of her arm. "We get to meet with Professor Awesome _twice a week_!"

Ruby somehow lit up even more. "Yeah! Team Battle Practice sounds super awesome! Do you think we'll be fighting the other teams like the Vytal Festival Tournament?"

Blake nodded at that. "Most likely. I wonder why our class tomorrow is _six_ hours long, though."

Yang grinned widely. "Six hours of _awesome_!"

Weiss scoffed at the baseless assumption. "You've never met the man and you have no idea what we'll be doing tomorrow. How can you possibly know it will be awesome?"

Yang gave her an 'are you dumb' look that Weiss really did not appreciate. "Because he's Professor _Awesome_? Besides, 'Directed Combat Training' sounds super sweet!"

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed right before she bumped into a wall that she couldn't see because she was still moving backwards. Righting herself with a blush, she fell in step next to her sister. "You think he'll think Crescent Rose is cool?"

Yang draped an arm around the little brunette's shoulders and pulled her into her side. "Of course! Crescent Rose is awesome!" When Ruby beamed up at her, Yang gave her sister a smirk. "Not as cool as Ember Celica though."

"Whateverrrr," Ruby grumbled dismissively. "Just a couple of dumb gloves. Scythe rifles are _way_ cooler!" When she flashed her sister eyes full of giggles, Yang laughed and tousled her sister's hair.

She turned to her partner them and gave Blake an elbow to invite her into the conversation. "What about you, Blakey-Blake? What's your weapon's name?"

The girl rolled her eyes at her ridiculous nickname. "I named it Gambol Shroud," she answered simply.

"Oooooh!" Ruby's eyes went wide. "That sounds so cool! … What's a gambol?"

Blake chuckled and shook her head lightly.

"It means 'to leap about playfully'," Weiss explained to her partner, regretting speaking up when all eyes turned to her.

"That's really cool!" Ruby repeated with a chirp.

Yang narrowed her eyes at Weiss. "Are you, like, a human dictionary or something?" she asked with a playful smirk.

Weiss gave a nonchalant tilt of her chin. "I have a good memory."

It was an understatement. She and her siblings had perfect eidetic memories when they were younger-Whitley still had it, to a large degree. Though their ability to perfectly recall anything had mostly faded away, Weiss and Winter still had incredibly accurate memories. It was a trait that was incredibly helpful in their studies, for obvious reasons.

"What about you, Weiss?"

"Hm?"

Ruby clarified with a small skip. "What's your weapon's name?"

"Ah. Myrtenaster." Weiss waited for the question she knew was coming.

"Neat!... What's that mean?" Ruby eyed her curiously.

An amused little grin snuck onto Weiss' face. "It's a type of white flower that's only found in Atlas near my grandfather's first Dust mine."

A happy gasp came out of her partner. "Both of our weapons are flowers!"

Weiss gave a small nod with a light smirk. It didn't seem like much more than a coincidence to her, but the bubbly brunette next to her seemed to think it meant a lot.

"And and and mine's named after roses, which are red like me! And yours are named after flowers that are white like you! Our name theme fits with our color schemes too!"

They'd reached the dorm building now, Weiss taking another brief moment to appreciate the beauty of the architecture. Ruby raced through the doors with a burst of rose petals, coming to a full stop in front of the piano in the lobby. She leaned over it and looked down like she was inspecting a strange animal, pursing her lips thoughtfully and scrunching her eyebrows. After slowly lifting the fallboard, she poked a sequence of three seemingly random notes (B flat, A, D, Weiss could tell from the sound) with her pointer finger. Ruby raced back to the team and bounced in front of Weiss with a sheepish grin as flower petals rained around them, flooding them with their trademark scent.

"What did you think of my song?"

Weiss blinked with a dubious frown. "I don't think that qualifies as a song, Ruby."

The girl pouted jokingly. "_You_ don't qualify as a song!"

Weiss nodded slowly. "Correct. I am a person, not a song. Well spotted, Ruby."

The dry response made Ruby giggle for some reason as Yang rolled her eyes and headed towards their room with Blake. Ruby wound up to run away with her semblance again.

"Hey!" Weiss called out to her partner before the girl could disappear again.

Ruby turned, wide-eyed, looking exactly like a girl being caught with her hand in a cookie jar. "... Yes?"

Weiss pointed back to the piano. "Go put the fallboard back down, you dolt!" The piano was beautiful and probably Weiss' favorite thing in this whole school, and she wanted it to be cared for and respected.

"The what?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "The wooden cover for the keys!" she explained, pointing emphatically. "Go put it back!"

Ruby glanced towards the piano and her eyes flashed with recognition. "Ooooh!" There was another whoosh of air and roses followed by a loud thunk as Ruby lowered the fallboard with _way_ too much force.

"Be gentle!" Weiss yelled towards the piano before realizing Ruby was already standing in front of her again. She turned to the brunette with a scowl. "If there's so much as a scratch on that piano I'm going to introduce you to the business end of Myrtenaster!"

It was an empty threat. She had no intention of ever attacking Ruby, but it was dramatic and hopefully got her point across.

In response, Ruby giggled, which was possibly the most grating reaction Weiss could have imagined. This was serious!

"Sorry," Ruby said. She shuffled side to side. "I'll be more careful."

Her expression seemed sincere, even if she'd been laughing like the situation was a joke. Weiss decided to let it go, rolling her eyes again for good measure. "Good!" she muttered as she walked after Blake and Yang, Ruby falling into step beside her.

"Does Myrtenaster have a _non_-business end?" Ruby asked with a blinding grin.

Weiss gave an unsure tilt of her chin. "I suppose the hilt…. Though, that _is_ where the Dust capsules are housed, so… no. It's all business." She shot a sideways glance at her partner and was pleased to find the girl's smile was even brighter now.

"What about Crescent Rose? Which side is the business end when it's in scythe mode?"

Weiss frowned at what seemed like a question with an obvious answer. "Wouldn't it be the blade?"

Ruby nodded excitedly. "Yeah! But there's blades on both ends!"

"There is?"

"Mhm! There's a spike on the back for stabby-stabbing!"

Weiss snorted out a laugh. "Stabby-stabbing?"

Somehow, Ruby's smile went even _wider_. "Yeah! It's like stabbing, but more stabby."

Weiss resisted the urge to smile at the ridiculousness, managing to roll her eyes instead. "Then I suppose Crescent Rose is all business too."

Ruby put on another playful pout. "But she likes cookies!"

Weiss wasn't sure what to respond to there. The idea a weapon could like food? The idea that a weapon had a gender? "You can be business-y and still like cookies," she decided to argue.

Ruby raised a skeptical eyebrow at her, though the girl didn't seem to have super fine control of the muscles around her eyes because she ended up slightly raising the other eyebrow as well, while squinting goofily. "Really?"

Weiss recoiled haughtily. "Just because I don't inhale a ridiculously unhealthy amount of deserts doesn't mean I don't like them! I actually really enjoyed that strawberry one."

Ruby skipped a little spin. "Me too! They're the best!" She grabbed Weiss' arm and gave it an excited little shake. "Thank you again, by the way!"

Resisting the urge to proudly smile again, Weiss rolled her eyes and gently pulled her arm away. "It was a gift, Ruby. You don't need to keep thanking me."

"I know, but I like to!" Ruby chirped with another skip. "So we've got the rest of the day to ourselves! What do you want to do?"

Was Ruby inviting herself to spend the day with Weiss? That… didn't sound _terrible_. But Weiss had been planning on reading the chapters for history, and she was doubtful that Ruby would sit through that-at least not quietly.

"I was going to do the reading for Oobleck's class…"

There was a brief pause, but just as Weiss turned to inspect Ruby's expression, a smile flashed on the brunette's face. "Okay! Do you remember what chapters we gotta read? 'Cause I don't."

'_That was too easy.'_

"You… want to spend the afternoon reading textbooks?"

Ruby smiled at her. "With you? Yeah, of course! I gotta be a better huntress and leader, right? And that means reading boring textbooks for some reason!"

The subtle complaints did nothing to dim the girl's megawatt smile, a smile Weiss returned lightly. This was… good. Weiss felt strangely… proud of Ruby.

"Okay. Let's do it." She gave her partner a small nod.

It took her a moment for all of what Ruby had said to register. '_With you? Of course!'_ Weiss didn't know what to feel or think about that. Hyperactive Ruby Rose was willing to sit around and read textbooks for a subject she hated as long as Weiss was with her? Why did that make Weiss feel so… special? Accomplished?

She couldn't name what she was feeling.

With a pleased "whoop!", Ruby bounced through the door of their room, almost crashing into Blake as their teammate was walking back out, a book in hand.

"Eep! Sorry Blake!" Ruby cried out. "Where you going?"

Blake held up her book (which sported a stylized chess piece on the front and had the title font of one of those teen romance novels that Weiss wasn't able to read from this angle). "I'm going to go find a tree to sit under and read. Weather's really nice. Yang's getting dressed to go to the gym." She gestured towards their bathroom. "Something about how she wanted an arm wrestle rematch with Nora and wanted to trounce her."

Amusement flooded through Weiss when she and Ruby both rolled their eyes at the same time.

After Blake stepped past them, Ruby turned to Weiss with a low voice. "Don't _ever_ go to the gym with Yang. She goes from Best Big Sister Ever to hyper-competitive weightlifter faster than I can eat a snickerdoodle."

"I can't imagine you gave Yang all that much competition as a bodybuilder," Weiss replied.

Ruby shook her head with a grin. "Oh no, she didn't compete against me. She competes against herself. She'll keep doing reps with more and more weight until she's out of Aura and collapsing in a pile of blonde hair and floppy muscles."

That was an amusing image. "I'd pay money to see that…" she murmured, eyeing the bathroom door behind which they could hear the blonde ape stomping around.

"It would be a waste of money. It's pretty sad and embarrassing." Ruby glanced over at Weiss thoughtfully. "Though I suppose you can afford to waste a little money."

Weiss nodded. "It's true," she agreed simply, inducing a little giggle from her partner.

She took a seat at her half of the double desk as while Ruby plopped down beside her with a sigh.

"Why can't this be a rolly chair?" the goofy girl griped.

"Would you get any work done if it was?" Weiss asked with a raised eyebrow and tiny smirk.

Ruby threw her hands up. "Who cares?! I'd be spinning!"

Shaking her head, Weiss pulled out "Remnant: A History" and flipped to the first chapter.

Ruby scooted her chair over and leaned into Weiss' shoulder. "Can I read with you?"

Weiss wrinkled her nose at the casual physical contact and the idea of sharing a textbook. "Don't _you_ have a copy?" she asked.

Ruby scratched the back of her head with a sheepish grin. "Yang and I have one copy of all the textbooks, and I'm pretty sure they're in the suitcase in her closet…"

As if on queue, Yang bursted out of her bathroom in… _very_ skimpy workout gear. Somehow her shorts were even shorter than her normal ones. Weiss wasn't even sure if they could classify as legwear anymore. And Yang's shirt… it was much too short and much, _much_ too tight.

"Alright, nerds! I'm gonna go get jacked!" She randomly flexed and inspected her well defined bicep.

'_These two are so weird…'_

Weiss was scared to even imagine what their father was like to raise such buffoons.

"Yang, if you pull every muscle in your body again I'm not gonna come down there and drag you back here," Ruby snarked at her sister as the girl walked out.

Yang blew a raspberry at her little sister. "It would be easy if you ever put some muscle on, Pipsqueak!" she yelled back as the door swung closed behind her.

Ruby crossed her arms and pouted. "I have muscles," she grumbled to herself as she stood and shuffled to Blake and Yang's closet.

Weiss inspected the chapter lengths in both the books she needed to read while Ruby trudged back and plopped the three history textbooks on her desk. Only sixteen pages, each with images and maps spaced through them. Not too bad. Ruby pulled her giant red headset out of her bag and slammed it over her ears with a huff, then pulled out her scroll and started playing her music.

When her partner frowned in confusion at the stack of three books in front of her, Weiss reached over and pointed at the top two books. "These two," she said. "Chapter one in both of them."

"Uggggggh," Ruby groaned. "So much readiiiiiing! Which one are you starting with?" Ruby glanced over and tried to lean under the desk to try to see the cover of the textbook in front of Weiss.

"Remnant: A History. And the chapter's pretty short in this one." With that, she turned back to her reading.

Ruby, as Weiss had expected, was incapable of staying still or quiet. She bounced her knee, drummed her fingers, bobbed her head, and hummed and sang along with her music.

"This'll be the day we waited for! Hm hm hm hm hm hm open up the do-or!"

Weiss resisted the urge to sigh heavily. It would be next to impossible for _her_ to focus on her reading like this, there was no way Ruby would be able to.

"Do you always listen to music while you do your homework?" she asked diplomatically, hoping her partner would take the hint.

Ruby shot her a beaming grin. "Yeah! I love my music!" A flash of excitement crossed her face. "Do you want to listen to?"

Weiss tried to quietly and politely protest, but Ruby didn't hear her. The brunette flipped the switch on her head phones as she took them off, making the music default to coming out of her scroll instead. Now the room was filled with the tinny sound of guitars, drums, and female vocals from the small speakers.

Sighing, Weiss tried to continue her reading, though it was hard to concentrate with the noise and motion beside her. She was tempted to go find a quiet spot to read, but she didn't want to just get up and walk out on Ruby. She'd promised she'd try to be a better partner, and part of that was not just walking away from issues.

"What kind of music do you listen to?" Ruby asked, jarring Weiss from her thoughts before she could come to a decision on how to handle this.

"Oh, I don't _listen_ to too much, and when I do it's mostly classical stuff or piano and vocals songs that I want to learn to play."

Ruby nodded eagerly. "Do you have a SongBox playlist to share? I'd love to lis-oh!" She bounced up and down, her hair tossing around wildly and somehow getting even messier. "Do _you_ have any songs on SongBox? Are you, like, published or recorded or official or whatever?"

Weiss rolled her eyes in amusement at Ruby's fumbling with words. "I am not. Though I think there are some videos online of me singing at the Red Carpet Gala a couple years ago." As soon as the words were out of her mouth she cringed in regret, dreading the inevitable-

"No way! You sang at an RCG?! Did you meet all the cool actors? Did you get to eat giant shrimp? Can we watch the video of you-"

"Ruby!" Weiss cried, silencing the excited girl, who looked at her with lips pursed like she felt she was in trouble but with eyes that shone with wonder. "I'd like to _not_ watch any videos of me, please."

The Gala was, unfortunately, an awful memory for her. Her father had been furious at her all night because she'd been shaking the hands of celebrities before he had, something she hadn't known was a breach in social etiquette until he'd dragged her by the ear around a corner and berated her for it. She'd always despised public events like that because no matter how hard she tried to behave well and proper, she _always_ did something wrong and her father was _always _furious with her. And an angry Father was… terrifying.

That had also been the night when her mother had decided to abandon all social graces and got plastered drunk, making a fool of herself in front of every famous person and camera in Remnant. Father had shoved her into a car and had her driven home early, but it hadn't stopped the deluge of speculative press about Willow Schnee, the booze abusing billionaire.

Weiss had done her best to hide from her father's presence and wrath for a solid month after that day.

The celebrities had been cordial enough, even though they all had a nonsensical inflation of their opinions of themselves considered all they gave to the world was playing pretend in front of a camera. Some of them had even given Weiss sympathetic smiles when her mother was making her big scene.

None of them had noticed the cause, though, the _real_ problem. They'd all been falling over each other to ingratiate themselves with the great Jacques Schnee, the actors trying to convince the tycoon of the benefits of filming a commercial with them while the directors and producers desperately tried to get the man to fund their projects.

Weiss had hated watching them worship him.

Ruby paused, and from the attentive look on the girl's face, Weiss was afraid she'd let some of the pain from that memory show.

The moment passed quickly, though. Ruby gave her another smile. "Okay! My music's pretty awesome anyway! Have you ever heard any Casey Lee Williams before?"

Weiss did her best to give Ruby a heartfelt smile, grateful that her partner was so willing to respect her subtle request for a change of subject. "I have not. But… would it be possible to turn the music _off_ while we're reading? I have a hard time focusing with the noise."

Disappointment briefly flashed across Ruby's eyes, so quickly Weiss wasn't entirely sure that she'd really seen it. But it was replaced quickly with another earnest grin.

"Sure, Weiss! Sorry, I didn't know." She flicked the music off.

Weiss quickly shook her head. "No need to apologize. And… thank you." She pointedly avoided her partner's gaze at the last sentence, looking anywhere and everywhere else. "You can still listen to it yourself, though," she said quietly, feeling slightly guilty for taking away something from Ruby that the girl clearly enjoyed. It was made even worse by how willing Ruby was to turn the music off at Weiss' request. Maybe it should be the other way around? Maybe Weiss should be figure out how to work through the noise instead of making Ruby be the considerate one.

But it really was hard for her to focus with the stimulus.

"Naw, it's okay," Ruby assured her. "I don't think it's physically possible for me _not_ to sing and possibly dance along with my music, which would probably still be pretty distracting for you."

"Oh, undoubtedly," Weiss replied with a small smile. She'd need to figure out a way to thank Ruby for being so considerate. Hopefully she got better at this soon-it would be really unfortunate if she ended up spending the entire Schnee family fortune on apology cookies.

A few minutes of silence passed as they read the chapter, the topic of which was a bunch of things Weiss already learned, though it did go into more detail than she'd been given from her private schooling and tutors. It was… pretty boring. Learning it was still necessary, though.

After a while Weiss began to notice that Ruby was constantly glancing over to peek at where Weiss had her finger on the page, and she would always turn the page right after Weiss. As a little experiment, Weiss put her hands in her lap, no longer using her manicured fingernail to track her spot on the page.

Less than half a minute later, Ruby glanced over, and Weiss could barely make out a little frown out of the corner of her eye.

"Where you at?" Ruby asked, making a valiant attempt at making the question sound casually curious.

Resisting a smirk, Weiss turned to her partner and feigned a look of exasperation. "Ruby Rose!" The girl's eyes widened in that adorably amusing deer-in-headlights expression. "Are you even reading?"

Ruby sputtered nervously. "Wh-whaat? Psssh! Yeah! O-of course I am! Look at me, just your typical Ruby Rose, studying hard and learning… harder…"

A light giggle escaped Weiss' lips before she clamped her mouth shut and put her frown of disapproval back on. The laugh didn't escape Ruby's notice, though, and the girl grinned proudly.

"Ruby!"

The grin disappeared. "What?!"

"You're just pretending to read at the same pace as me!"

Ruby blinked rapidly and clutched her hands to her chest nervously. "Whaaaaaaat? That's preposp… perspos... perspop-that's just silly!"

Weiss crossed her arms and dubiously pursed her lips to the side, not letting Ruby's brilliant wordsmithing draw another giggle out of her.

With a pout, Ruby jabbed a tiny finger at Weiss. "Look, Princess Bossy-Pants, this crap is _boring_, okay? I could be outside running around or playing something or at least listening to music but I'm not! I'm trying to study super hard and be smart like you, okay?"

The brunette seemed genuinely upset, and Weiss was smacked with another pang of guilt at the reminder that Ruby was basically here against her will. And the compliment was nice, especially because Ruby clearly wasn't just trying to flatter her. The girl genuinely thought Weiss was smart, and that honest praise was strangely fulfilling.

She had no idea why that was. She hadn't worked and studied and trained so hard in order to impress Ruby Rose, cookie addict extraordinaire. But she felt proud all the same.

"But Ruby, if you're not paying attention to what you're reading, you're not learning anything. You're just here spending time with me."

Ruby turned her pout down to her hands. "What's wrong with that?" she replied quietly.

Weiss blinked. Once again, she was sitting here speechless at how openly eager Ruby was to be her friend.

She was going to go broke buying cookies before the semester was over.

"Hey," she said, reaching out to tap Ruby lightly on the shoulder to get her attention. She gave Ruby a smile hoping it would wipe away the sadness on her partner's face. "How about this: we finish reading this chapter-just this chapter, and you have to _really_ read it-and then we can spend the rest of the day… having fun."

Silver eyes went wide at those words. "What _kind_ of fun?"

Weiss frowned. She wasn't really sure. There were a lot of things Ruby clearly enjoyed doing, but Weiss had no idea which one would make her feel the best right now.

"I suppose anything you'd like," she promised hesitantly.

"_Anything_?"

The mischievous glint in Ruby's eyes immediately gave Weiss pause. "As long as it's not ridiculous," she amended.

Ruby squinted in thought at the new qualification, and Weiss was scared to know what plan she'd had that fit Ruby's definition of ridiculous.

"Oh, I know! We could play Huntsman Royale Two together! I'll even let you play Nidas so you can see how cool he is before his class tomorrow!"

Weiss frowned. "I don't know, Ruby. I've… never actually _played_ a video game before…"

The surprise on Ruby's face was palpable. "What, like, at _all_?"

Weiss shook her head.

Undaunted, Ruby gave her another beaming smile. "That's okay! I'll teach you! They're a ton of fun!"

Weiss _had_ said they could do whatever Ruby wanted, and video games weren't _that_ ridiculous…

"I bet you'll be really good, too!" Ruby chirped, that smile still fixed on her face.

Well it seemed like Ruby _was_ a flatterer. When Weiss raised an eyebrow in disbelief, though, Ruby doubled down.

"No, for real! The most important thing in most games is to be able to think really fast about a lot of things at once, and you must be pretty good at that from your Dust casting! Once you're fingers get used to it, I bet you'll be awesome! _And _you already have pretty dexterious fingers from playing the piano!"

Well that was… remarkably well thought out, Weiss admitted to herself. The word goof was making her brain itch, though.

"Dextrous," she corrected with a small grin.

Ruby's eyebrows scrunched. "What did I say?"

"Dexterious."

"Oh, heh…" She scratched the back of her head in that nervous tick she had. "Woops. Anyway, what do you say?"

Weiss didn't really have any desire to play video games, but she didn't really have anything _against_ them. Father had said once they were childish and unbecoming of a Schnee, but she'd be playing them for Ruby, and Ruby was most certainly childish…

"Fine, but you have to _actually_ read the chapter. And we're gonna go through the review questions at the end to make sure you remember everything."

Ruby threw her arms in the air with a happy "woohoo!" before wrapping Weiss' shoulders in a quick hug that Weiss didn't cringe away from. Instead, she smiled at her excited partner and pointed at the textbook in front of her.

"_Read_."

Ruby gave her a silly salute and a bow at the same time. "Aye aye, Cap'n Your Majesty, ma'am!"

"No no, Ruby," Weiss said with a smile. "_You're_ the captain."

The blinding grin she got in return told Weiss that was the right thing to say. Now for the ultimate test: could their fearless team leader read a book?

* * *

**Ok, I've now combined both parts of Ch9 to make all of this easier. (If you started reading after 4/17/19, just ignore this note). **

**Check out writingbyjace .com for my own custom site for this story. (It's a lot better xD)**


	10. Seeding 1-10

**Sorry for the late update! I took my time with this one, and I freaking loved writing it. For context, I went to university to study game design, and have actually put a lot of thought into what a "Huntsman Royale II" would actually look like. For anyone that doesn't care much for this fluff, I apologize. I hope everyone enjoys!**

* * *

"'In what order were the four kingdoms founded, and what was the name of the individual primarily responsible for the original settlements?'"

Ruby frowned in thought as Weiss read off the question, confident that she could answer the first part and not at all confident that she remembered the names for the second part. "Umm… Vale, Mistral, Vacuo, Atlas!"

Weiss gave her a nod of confirmation that made Ruby beam with pride.

"And the names of the founders?" Weiss pressed, knocking the smile off of Ruby's face.

"Uh… Vale was founded by that guy that sounds like Ozpin but isn't!"

"Oz_ran_, yes. Ozran Oaks. And Mistral?"

Darn. Her partner was pushing her really hard with this… Maybe Ruby could distract her with cookies! "I need a snack! You want some cookies?"

She moved to stand up but Weiss' cold hand flashed out and clamped around her wrist. "Sit down! No cookies for you until go through the review questions!"

Ruby pouted at her partner, though Weiss pointedly looked away from her, biting her lip. "But Weiiiiiss!" Ruby whined. "I'm sorry! I'm dumb, I don't remember!"

It sucked having to sit here and not be able to answer these questions. She felt so dumb and useless, and Weiss had probably memorized all the answers before she'd even read the chapter.

But Weiss shot her a disapproving glare. "You're not dumb, Ruby. It's okay if you don't remember, that's why y-_we're_ studying. To help you learn this stuff. Now _sit down_ for a few more minutes and get through these questions with me!"

Ruby sank back into her chair, her pout slowly fading away. It was pretty nice that Weiss was willing to sit here and help Ruby learn stuff that she didn't need to study herself.

Weiss tapped the spot on the page in the book in front of Ruby where the question they were on sat taunting her. "Now… founder of Mistral?"

"W...We-something with a W? Winter?"

Weiss pursed her lips. "Winter is my sister's name, Ruby."

"Oh, right." Ruby scratched the back of her head nervously. "Wesley? Wimbledon? Wendell?"

"Yes!"

Ruby's eyes went wide at Weiss' apparent excitement, but the girl continued.

"Wendell. Do you remember his last name?" As Ruby stayed silent in an effort to remember, Weiss gently reminded her, "Mistral was named _after_ him."

"Oh! Mistraliesin!" Now she remembered! It was such a long and clunky name, but it was easy to remember it once she was reminded of its relation to the kingdom.

Weiss smiled at her. "And Vacuo's founder?"

Hmm… "Vacuo wasn't named after him, right?" When Weiss shook her head with an amused smirk, Ruby gritted her teeth. "It was… His name was something to do with deserts, right?" Weiss gave her a nod, that ever so tiny upwards curve of her lip still present.

"Dune?" Ruby guessed, lighting up when Weiss gave her a proud nod.

"You remember his first name?" Weiss asked.

"It was something with a D, right? Cuz his initials are double D, like Yang!"

Weiss did that little half eye roll she'd started doing earlier today. "Not the way _I'd_ choose to remember it, but yes, his initials are D.D."

"Da… Dandelion!"

Okay, getting answers like this right was really satisfying when it made Weiss smile at her like that. Maybe studying wasn't so bad.

… As long as she wasn't wrong. Her head still hurt where Weiss had smacked her for guessing random stuff earlier.

"And last but not least, Atlas."

Ruby cleared her throat. She'd made a point to remember this one because Weiss was from Atlas. "Ryan Ironwood!" she chirped, earning another pleased lip twitch from her partner.

"Do you know why the Ironwood name is still important?" Weiss asked.

"Uh…" Ruby flipped back a couple pages to find the section on Atlas.

"It won't be there," Weiss interrupted her. "I'm just curious if you know." When Ruby shook her head, wide-eyed, the girl smiled. "General James Ironwood, Ryan Ironwood's descendant, is the head of the Atlesian military and the headmaster of Atlas Academy."

Ruby blinked. "Wait, is he the 'Iron Fist of Atlas'? Cuz there's an Atlesian general dude with that title in HR2! Yang and I call him Ironbro."

Weiss nodded with a snort. "Some people call him that. Anyway, next question. 'What about Atlas' founding makes it unique from the other three kingdoms?'"

She knew this, too! "It was just a school! But then it took over as the main city of the kingdom and now it's the center of power up there."

Again, another satisfied nod. "What was the name of the original kingdom?"

"Mantle!"

Their quizzing continued like this for another 15 minutes, though it _felt_ like a million billion kajillion. Finally, Weiss let out a long breath and closed her textbook, giving Ruby a small smile.

"Good job! Work on those founder names. And the river names. And the… actually, just work on memorizing the names in general. But that was good!"

Ruby beamed at her partner. "Thanks! Does that mean it's cookie and video game time?"

She almost laughed at the way Weiss cringed. "I suppose…" the girl practically groaned.

"Come on! It'll be fun, promise! You can play Ironbro-whatever-his-name-is!" Jumping up, Ruby zoomed over to the drawer beside her and Weiss' bunk and pulled out the controllers before grabbing her scroll and dashing to the door. She stayed there, hopping in place, as Weiss slowly-soooo slowly-pulled herself out of her chair and trudged over to Ruby.

It was _really_ hard not to laugh at how dejected Weiss looked.

"Wei-eiss," Ruby chastised in a sing-song tone, "you promised."

The princess sighed heavily as her gaze forlornly fell to her feet. "I know I did," she murmured.

So dramatic! You'd think she was about to get executed or something!

Ruby giggled before grabbing the girl's hand and dragging her down the hallway at a quick skip. "Rubyyyy," Weiss whined behind her, but Ruby just giggled again and paid the girl no mind.

She pushed her friend onto the couch with a smirk and ran to the kitchen yelling "I'll get some cookies and milk!" over her shoulder.

Two glasses? Check. One plate? Check. Eighteen thousand five hundred sixty-nine chocolate chip cookies? … Not quite. She got a _lot,_ though.

When she plopped the mountainous plate of cookies and glasses of milk on the coffee table, she cackled at the look of absolute horror on Weiss' face.

"Ruby, I hope you can eat pretty much all of those. I can eat maybe two _max_."

Wow. That was weak sauce. Two cookies? That was, like… half of a half of a bite. She shrugged. "Worry not, fair maiden! I shall vanquish the cookies for you!"

"You're so weird."

Ruby beamed at her friend before turning on the tv and syncing her scroll with it and launching Huntsman Royale 2. It was happening! She was going to play video games with her best friend! She'd never played anything with someone that wasn't Yang or Dad or Uncle Qrow. This was so exciting!

Oh no. She'd never _taught_ anyone how to play video games, either. What if she did it wrong? What if she was bad at explaining?

'_Aaaaaaaaaaaah!'_

"Ruby?"

"Hm?" She looked over to find Weiss looking at her quizzically.

"Why are you staring at me like I just grew a second head or something?"

Ruby shook her head and jumped onto the couch next to Weiss. "Sorry! Was just thinking about… stuff and things."

"Stuff and things."

"Mhmm! Now this is yours." She pushed a controller into Weiss' hands-it was actually Ruby's controller, but she decided to give hers to Weiss because it was in better shape than Yang's (Yang always hit the buttons _way _too hard-this was like her fifth controller 'cause she broke all her other ones!). "Do you remember any of this game from watching us the other night?"

Weiss shook her head slowly. "I wasn't paying too much attention. I remember what it looked like, but I didn't really understand what was going on."

"That's okay! We'll do some practice stuff first!"

'_Play. Split screen. Training arena.'_

"Okay! Pick your character!" The faces of the sixteen huntsmen and huntresses on the screen were arranged in alphabetical order, all with super serious fighter faces that always made Ruby laugh. If she got put in a video game she'd be smiling like crazy! Though she supposed that was up to the game artists, really…

"Is _that _General Ironwood?" Weiss asked, pointing at one of the blue-backed huntsman pictures.

"Yeah! You want to play him?"

Weiss was wide-eyed and, in Ruby's opinion, looked a little excited. "Wow, he looks really young. Sure, I'll play him."

Ruby watched the screen expectantly, but Weiss' character selection box didn't move at all. She glanced over and saw Weiss just sitting there, her controller resting in the palms of her dainty princess hands. "Okay!" Ruby prompted her. "Go ahead and select him!"

Weiss' eyes flicked from the screen to Ruby to the controller in her hands and back to the screen. "How?" she asked timidly, like she was scared of admitting she didn't know how to do something.

'_How? Crap, I gotta teach her _everything!'

Ruby immediately felt bad. "Sorry! I forgot you haven't-yeah, sorry." She scooted closer to Weiss and held her controller out to exaggerate everything. "'Kay, hold the controller in both hands like this. Yep! Now this thumb will move this joystick around-yeah, just like that! And this one will move this joystick and press these buttons."

Weiss frowned. "Why does my right hand have to do more, though? I'm left handed!"

A wide grin appeared on Ruby's face. "Me too! I wish they'd make a special controller for southpaws. But they don't 'cause they're fat and dumb. So yeah, it's just something we gotta deal with."

A huff escaped Weiss as she made a grumpy face (Ruby decided she'd refer to that expression as 'the Princess Pout' from now on). "This is unacceptable! Who do I have to talk to to get left-handed controllers made?!"

Ruby scratched the back of her head. "I dunno. I guess Optix Gaming? They made these controllers. But don't worry! You can still select the southpaw control scheme in-game, and that makes things a little better."

Weiss' frown didn't go away, but she nodded in acceptance.

"Okay, and then your pointy fingers go around here and you use them to hit these buttons on the back."

Weiss tilted the controller toward herself to get a good look at the bumpers and triggers. "Oh, there's two of them," she remarked in surprise.

"Yep! That's pretty much it. Oh, this is the d-pad-it stands for 'directional pad', though Yang made me believe it stood for 'douche-pad' for _years_."

The incredulous look Weiss gave her made Ruby giggle. "Why would you believe this would be called a douche?"

"I have no idea! I just believed my big sister, okay! That's not a crime!"

Weiss arched one of those perfectly thin eyebrows at her. "With _your _sister it might be."

After a brief moment of exaggerated though, Ruby shrugged. "Fair."

Turning back to the screen, Weiss gestured towards Ironbro. "So how do I select him?"

"Oh, right! So that blue box on the right is the character you've got selected right now. See it? You're on the first character, Axel Mars, right now."

Weiss nodded in understand. "Yes, I see it."

"Cool! So just use that left joystick and move to the right until you're over Ironbro's portrait, then hit 'A'. That bottom button there."

Flicking through the characters one at a time, Weiss finally got to her character-James Ironwood, the Iron Fist of Atlas-and pressed the select button ever so gently. "Like that?"

"Yep! Don't be afraid of breaking the controller, by the way. You can press a little harder." Seriously, Ruby thought she was really careful with her controller compared to Yang, but Weiss was being a whole different level of light-fingered.

"Sorry," Weiss said. "Used to being really gentle with piano keys."

'_That makes sense.'_

"No worries! So now… well now _I _need to pick a character… Do I want to play our professor or the Grimm Reaper?"

Weiss gave her a wide-eyed shrug. "I suppose seeing our professor would be… _cool_?" The way she said that last word made Ruby giggle. It was like she wasn't used to saying it at all!

She locked in Nidas. "You can change outfits and colors with these bumpers if you want." She demonstrated the buttons with her controller. "The pink Ironbro outfit is really funny."

"But… General Ironwood doesn't _wear_ pink."

"I know, but it looks so-wait, have you met him before?"

With a curious tilt of her head, Weiss looked over at Ruby. "Of course! I met him several times at Atlas Academy while visiting Winter, and he's been visiting the manor for years to speak with Father about projects and business deals."

'_The manor,' _Ruby thought with a grin. Most people have houses, but Weiss? She had a _manor_. Though she seemed like she belonged in a _castle_ or a _palace_ more than anything else. Maybe, like, an ice palace with lots of snow and pretty snowflake designs and a throne of-

"Why are you smiling at me like an idiot?"

Weiss' condescending tone pulled Ruby back to reality.

"I'm not!"

"You are."

"No, I'm smiling like a Ruby!"

"That's what I said."

Wait, was that a joke? Ruby squinted at her partner and noticed the upturned corners of her lips. It _was _a joke! The Pyrrha joke wasn't just a one-off!

Another proud smile pulled at Ruby's face as she turned back to the game with a happy wiggle. "You're gonna pay for that," she threatened teasingly. She grabbed a cookie and dunked it in her glass of milk, shoving the whole thing in her mouth and munching contentedly as she pressed Start to load them into the training room.

"You know, you'd be a lot more scary without a face full of chocolate chips."

"Mm hmf hmm-" Ruby stopped to swallow when she noticed Weiss glaring at her. "Yeah, but then I wouldn't have cookies!"

With one of those half eye rolls-that Ruby was starting to realize was Weiss smiling without smiling-Weiss sighed. "And I suppose you care more about having cookies than being scary?"

"Of course!"

"Wonderful. I'm sure the Grimm will find it adorable too and decide to leave us alone."

Giggling, Ruby bumped Weiss' shoulder with her own. "That's what you're here for! You'll just give them that grumpy princess face and they'll run away screaming!"

Weiss narrowed her eyes at Ruby in a playful glare.

"Yeah, that one! Ooh! We're in!"

Their game had loaded, the tv now giving them a split screen view of both of their characters from behind.

Ironbro stood in his straight-backed military fashion, a revolver in one hand and while his other was empty-but _robotic_! It was super cool.

Nidas stood far more relaxed, twirling a single edged blade in each hand. Ruby had selected the black and red color scheme, so he actually looked like a grown up, dude version of her! Black leathers and a long red cape. (She always picked this outfit for him. Now that she thought about it, she couldn't actually remember the normal colors of his outfit.)

"Okay! So this is the training arena. If you press 'Select' you can see a list of your abilities." Weiss took a moment to glance at the controller and find the right button, then her half of the screen was filled with a pop-up with ability and controller icons with some text descriptions. "Yeah! So Ironbro's actually pretty simple to play. His semblance is a passive-Danger Sense. Whenever an enemy is planning to attack you, they'll glow red. It also shows you the paths that enemies are on to move towards you. That only works against computer enemies, though, cuz the game doesn't know what other players are going to do. So when you're against enemy players it shows you the cooldowns of their abilities instead."

Weiss gave a contemplative "hmm". When Ruby looked over at her, she gave that head tilt that was her version of a shrug. "I never knew that's what his semblance was," she explained.

"See! You learned something from a video game!" Ruby chirped with a big smile.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yes, we might as well just not study and play video games all day," she drawled sarcastically. "Basically the same thing."

Ruby perked up, but Weiss shot her a suspicious and knowing glance. "I'm _kidding_."

"Aww…" Ruby deflated slightly, but only for a second! "Anyway! Your weapon's pretty boring. It's just a pistol. You look around with this guy-" she wiggled the right joystick "-then when you want to shoot you hold down the left trigger to aim down the sights, and the right one to fire."

Slowly, with lots of looking between Ruby's hands and her own and the screen, Weiss followed the steps Ruby had demonstrated. A loud gunshot came from the speakers on the tv, and Weiss _jumped_.

Yes. She jumped.

Ruby laughed. A lot.

Weiss blushed furiously and looked away, muttering, "I didn't think it would be that loud!"

"Okay! Okayokayokay!" Ruby managed to huff between giggles. "Just like that! But without the whole getting-scared-of-the-loud-noise bit."

Weiss shot her a glare before turning back to the game. She turned Ironbro towards Ruby's character, aimed… and shot Ruby in the head!

It didn't do anything.

"Why didn't that do damage to you or something?!" Weiss whined adorably.

"Because we're on a team, you jerk!" Ruby giggled. "Why you tryna shoot me?"

Turning to her with the Princess Pout, Weiss replied, "Because you're a dolt!"

Ruby couldn't help but giggle again. She'd never heard anyone call anybody a "dolt" in her life before meeting Weiss, but it had to be one of the cutest words ever! It was like "dummy" but _way_ cuter.

"Well there's no friendly fire, so hnn!" She stuck her tongue out at her partner who turned away with a huff.

"Whatever! What else do I do?"

"Hit 'Select' again," Ruby instructed while grabbing another cookie. "Okay, so your regular attack-that right trigger-is just a punch. It doesn't have a whole lot of reach but it hits _really_ hard 'cause Ironbro has a robot arm!"

Weiss frowned thoughtfully. "I never did learn how that came about," she mused.

Gulping down some milk to wash the cookie from her mouth, Ruby nodded. "Yang and I were wondering about that, too. It's not in his codex entry, so we never found out."

"Codex?"

"Yeah, it's got short little bios of all the huntsmen in the game, plus descriptions of the maps and stuff. It's in the main menu." She pointed back to the screen when Weiss nodded. "Anyway, the other basics are 'A' for jump and 'B' for roll. Save your roll for when you need it, 'cause they nerfed it from Huntsman Royale One. It has, like, a _five _second cooldown so you can't just spam it and avoid all damage forever and ever anymore."

"What's a cooldown again?"

Ruby blinked in surprise and turned to Weiss, who was looking at her confused. "Oh! Sorry. A cooldown is… it's like a timer that says how long you have to wait to use an ability again. So, like... you see those numbers on the little clock symbol next to all your ability icons? Those are the cooldowns. So you have to wait eight seconds after using your 'LB'-that's that button-before you can use it again."

Weiss nodded slowly. "Okay, got it. And my… 'LB'… is this 'Precision Shot'?" She leaned forward to read the small text next to the ability.

"Yeah! You automatically headshot all bad guys in a cone in front of you, and it one shots that weak minions like Beowolves and Atlesian Knights and White Fang mooks."

Weiss straightened up at that. "Wait, why are Atlesian Knights bad guys?"

Shrugging, Ruby explained. "The enemies depend on what map you're on. And if you're in PVP, which side you're on. In the game's campaign, the Atlesian dudes are actually your buddies for most of it, until some bad guys hack the robot ones and then you gotta fight 'em with what's left of the human squad. And if you lose the last human soldier you lose the level. It's really cool unless the AI starts acting stupid."

"Oh." It didn't really look like Weiss understood most of that. "And the White Fang are bad guys?"

"Mhm! Well they are in the campaign. In PVP they're your buddies if you spawn red side."

Weiss crinkled her nose. "Why would anyone want to be on the _White Fang's_ side? They're evil terrorists!"

Ruby shrugged. "Dunno. They needed another faction in the game cuz the only other faction is Grimm, which are the map neutrals.

"Anyway! That's your 'LB'. Your 'Y' is a short charge forward that uppercuts the first enemy you hit and knocks them up. It combos into your 'RB' really well. That's a punch that knocks all nearby enemies back and slows them for a bit. If you're really good and fast you can knockup, knockback, headshot an enemy player and take out like half their HP without them being able to react."

"O...kay…" Weiss looked down at her controller and all mimed pressing all the buttons, looking pretty overwhelmed.

'_Crap. I'm doing this wrong,'_ Ruby scolded herself.

"Don't worry too much about that! Just try moving around and using your abilities on these training dummies over here." Leading the way with Nidas, Ruby walked over to the straw dummies in the center of the arena they'd spawned into.

"How do I move?"

'_Ruby, you officially suck at teaching.'_

"Left joystick! So move with this-" she wiggled the left joystick "-and look around with this-" she wiggled the right joystick.

For the next minute Weiss did nothing but walk around and turn in random directions, getting the feel for the controls, and Ruby forced herself to patiently wait-which was _really _hard 'cause she really wanted to blow up pixelated Grimm with her partner!

"You can also sprint if you click the left joystick down," Ruby explained once Weiss seemed to get the hang of the movement.

After another little bit of experimentation, Weiss asked, "If I jump while sprinting, do I go farther?"

Ruby beamed a smile, ecstatic that her partner seemed to be getting the game mechanics. "Yeah! And if you time it right, as long as your roll is off cooldown, you can roll right when you land the jump and it doesn't put the roll on cooldown. It's really hard, though-the window's like eight or ten frames."

Weiss tilted her head. "What does that mean? Eight or ten frames."

"Oh!" Ruby repositioned a bit on the couch. "So the game has an fps rate, just like the tv or our scrolls do. It's sixty fps-frames per second."

"Oooh," Weiss breathed with a nod. "So if it's ten frames, that's one-sixth of a second to land the roll?"

"Yep!" Ruby bounced excitedly. "Like I said, it's pretty hard. Yang still screws it up most of the time."

"Do you?" her partner asked quizzically.

Ruby gave a proud grin. "Nope! I'm pretty quick with my fingers. Yang likes to complain that my semblance makes me faster 'cause she doesn't like the alternative explanation-that she just sucks and I'm better than her."

That made Weiss giggle! It sounded amazing, like a super clear wind chime just rang out from a winter breeze. "I'm sure you are," she agreed as she tried to roll cancel herself, her eyebrows scrunched in concentration. After six or seven tries, she got it! Then she got it again! … And again!

"What the frickity frack?" Ruby wondered aloud. "How'd you get so good so fast?"

Weiss gave her a sheepish grin and princess shrugged. "You just have to wait for his right toe to hit the ground," she explained simply.

"Yeah, but…" It was one thing to know the trigger to watch for, but Weiss was pressing the button at the right moment _every time_. "Okay, maybe I don't want to teach you anymore."

"What?!" Weiss turned to her with a worried and offended expression. "Why? What did I do?!"

Giggling, Ruby patted Weiss' shoulder. "Nothing! I was kidding. It's just that roll canceling the landing animation is one of the hardest mechanics in the game, and you seem to have mastered it in, like, thirty seconds. If I keep teaching you, you're gonna get better than me!"

"Oh." Weiss blushed, looking embarrassed either about her little freak out or the compliment. "Thanks… So what next?"

Grabbing another cookie, Ruby gestured back at the screen. "Try some of your abilities! Use your 'RB' on those training dummies."

When she did, Weiss let out a little yelp as the heads on the training dummies exploded and the things despawned. "Where'd they go?" she cried over Ruby's laughter.

"You killed 'em, silly!"

"But where'd there bodies go? Did they teleport or something?"

Realizing what was confusing her partner, Ruby laughed again. "No, when things die their bodies despawn. Otherwise the map would get way too cluttered. Plus, Grimm do that in real life already." As she spoke, the training dummies respawned.

"They're back! Where'd they come from?"

Ruby actually had to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing again. She supposed this confusion was a little understandable since it was Weiss' first video game ever. "They respawned. They didn't come from anywhere, the game just loaded them in at that spot."

Weiss frowned. "Oh. So enemies can just spawn right behind you if they want to?"

"Well… no. When you're in actual matches the AI only spawns at certain spawn points, and they won't spawn at them if you're within a certain radius of a point. Now try your 'Y'."

Weiss hit the button, then frowned as Ironbro dashed forward a little bit and uppercut nothing but air. "That was… lame."

"You gotta get closer to the bad guys."

Weiss walked right up to a dummy and pressed the button again, scowling when nothing happened.

"It's on cooldown right now, Weissy-Weiss." Weiss shot her a glare, but Ruby ignored it and tried really hard not to smile. "Look, that icon down there with the little dashing dude that looks like it's ticking like a clock is the cooldown indicator for your 'Y'. The crosshair icon is your 'LB' and the punchy fist is your 'RB'."

She studiously kept her eyes on the screen as she felt Weiss continuing to glare at her, but it was getting difficult to not grin.

"Did you just call me… _Weissy-Weiss_?"

Unable to contain it any longer, Ruby burst out laughing. The way Weiss had said it was just too funny! '_Weissy-Weiss?' _like it was something gross and icky.

"Sure did!" she chirped with a grin. "Whatcha gonna do about it?" She walked her character up to Weiss' and started spamming jump tauntingly.

Weiss narrowed her eyes, glancing between the screen and Ruby a couple of times before her gaze drifted down to the plate of cookies on the coffee table.

Eyes widening in horror as what Weiss was thinking clicked, Ruby tried to tackle her partner before she could-

It didn't even matter. Ruby successfully knocked her partner into the armrest of the couch, both of them squealing, but Weiss summoned a white glyph underneath the plate and launched the cookies into the air.

"Noooooo!" Ruby yelled as she pushed herself from the couch and tried to jump up to catch the plate as it fell… but it didn't!

Another glyph appeared above the cookies, this one black, and the snacks and plate both hung suspended in the air a couple feet out of Ruby's reach.

"Weiss…" Ruby said slowly like she was trying to calm an angry dog. "It was just a joke. I'll never call you Weissy-Weiss again. Just… please, have mercy on my beautiful cookies."

The princess pushed herself up with a huff, straightening out her skirt before folding her hands in her laps and trying to look innocent. Her lips pursed as she suppressed a smile, but the twinkle in her eyes seemed like the Weiss equivalent of hysterical cackling.

"What are you two doing?" a familiar voice sounded from behind them.

They both turned to find Blake standing in the entrance to the living clutching her book, a bemused look on her face as she eyed the floating cookies.

"I was teaching Weiss how to play Huntsman Royale Two and everything was going great but then I called her Weissy-Weiss and now she's being mean and holding my cookies hostage!" She took a deep breath as she finished her rant and pointed a finger accusingly at her partner.

Blake arched an eyebrow at Weiss. "Didn't you say you wouldn't take Ruby's cookies as punishment because that would be cruel and unusual?"

Princess Pout. "Crap, I did, didn't I?" Weiss grumbled.

"Y-yeah!" Ruby shouted. "So give me back my cookies!"

"Fiiiine," Weiss sighed. "Catch."

'_Catch? Wha-'_

"EEEEEP!" Ruby dove forward as Weiss dissipated her glyph and the cookie plate fell, getting her hands under it just before it crashed onto the table, the cookies staying piled cleanly while some crumbs bounced over the lip of the plate.

"Weiss!" she cried out, but Weiss didn't hear over her… laughter.

Weiss was laughing. Like openly, happily, _loudly_ laughing.

Blake's other eyebrow arched up and she met Ruby's eyes with a small grin.

"You-hahaha-wha-what was that _noise_?!" Weiss asked through her laughter.

Her cheeks instantly flushing pink in embarrassment, Ruby sat back down and hugged the plate of cookies to herself and leaned over it protectively. "My precious cookies were in danger!" she snapped back at Weiss as the girl doubled over gasping and wiping tears from her eyes.

It wasn't _that_ funny… Was it?

Blake wasn't laughing at all, just smiling in amusement at Weiss' reaction. So it couldn't have been _that_ hilarious of a sound.

Ruby could feel her cheeks growing redder and redder as she pouted and tried to glare at her partner. (She failed-it was impossible not to smile at the sound of Weiss' laughter.) She watched Weiss' face closely, wanting to commit this smile to memory so she'd know what to aim for in the future.

Weiss finally took a deep breath and let it out with a laughing huff, rubbing the back of her hand across her face one last time. "Why are you grinning at me like that?"

"No reason!" Ruby put the cookies back on the table-popping one into her mouth-and pointed at the tv. "Wanna play a mission?"

"Is-would we be on a team?" Weiss asked as she glanced nervously at the game.

"Yeah!" Ruby answered with an encouraging nod.

Weiss pursed her lips. "Okay. Let's do it."

'_YES!'_

"Okayokayokayokay!" Ruby bounced up and down and gave Weiss a shoulder bump. "We'll just do the first level and you can get used to it, 'kay?"

Weiss nodded.

"Alright. The game starts with a White Fang attack in Argus, and we have to defend the comm tower." She navigated through the menus to get them started, before glancing back at their other teammate. Blake was frowning and looked… Ruby wasn't sure what to think of her expression.

"Blake?" she asked. "You wanna play with us?"

Blake slowly pulled her gaze from the level select screen with the image of a group of masked White Fang mooks stood in front of a tall radio tower. "No thanks. I'm gonna... go to bed."

"Oh. Okay! Sweet dreams and stuff!"

Weiss chipped in with a soft "Good night" as Blake quickly walked away with her head down.

"Is she okay?" Ruby whispered to Weiss once their teammate was out of earshot.

Weiss princess shrugged. "I wasn't really paying attention. Did she do something strange?"

Ruby turned back to the game. "I guess not. You ready? Lock in General Ironbro and we can get started." Tabbing down to her own huntsman, she selected Nidas and tapped start when Weiss was ready. The loading screen popped up and set Ruby's knee bouncing in anticipation. This was going to be awesome!

"Okay, so the level starts off pretty slow. It functions kinda like a tutorial, so it'll have us just walk around and look at stuff while we're 'on patrol' around the tower."

"Okay…" Weiss replied quietly, looking way too nervous for someone just playing a video game.

"Relax, Weiss!"

Shifting her worried gaze over to Ruby, Weiss voiced her concerns. "What if I mess up and we lose?"

Okay, it was kinda adorable how serious Weiss was taking this. "Don't worry about it!" Ruby reassured her partner. "It's a really easy level. I can beat it myself even on two player difficulty. And even if we _do _lose, it's okay." She grinned widely. "We don't die in real life if we die in game."

Weiss blinked, clearly not getting the reference. "I didn't think we would…"

Ruby inwardly groaned. Of _course_ Weiss wouldn't get a reference to one of Ruby's silly cartoons. Weiss was grown up and mature and stuff-she didn't watch kids shows.

"I… nevermind. We're in!"

Her announcement made her partner clutch her controller a bit harder. "I'm ready," Weiss declared, sounding anything but.

"Alright! Follow me. The AI captain takes forever to get through the boring dialogue stuff. We can just run to the forest and trigger the attack."

Ruby lead the way, showing off Nidas' dashes and Fire-Dust-enhanced-double-jump and swapping between his twin blades and hardlight bow modes as she ran. Weiss followed slowly behind, panning her camera around and staring slightly open mouthed at the game's environment.

"I want to get in the airship!" she said, running up to the vehicle that had just landed in the air strip and deployed the rest of the patrol they were supposed to walk around with.

"You can't," Ruby told her gently.

"Aww. Why not? It's right there!"

Ruby giggled at her friend. "It's just a model. The game doesn't have any vehicle mechanics, unfortunately. Though apparently in a couple months they're adding a DLC that lets you pilot the Paladins!" That was going to be super awesome. She and Yang had already challenged each other to epic mech 1v1s-or, as Yang called it, Pallid-offs.

"That sounds… cool," Weiss said as she had Ironbro follow Ruby's character toward the forest.

"It will be! But anyway, you ready? As soon as you cross this line-" she jumped up and down at the edge of the road they were on "-there's gonna be an explosion behind us and the White Fang will attack!"

"Sounds about right," Weiss grumbled darkly.

That was true. The White Fang were pretty big meanies from what Dad told them about the news.

"Okay. This line?" Weiss asked, standing Ironbro in front of Nidas, looking down at the grass (which had insanely good graphics) that marked the trigger box.

"Yep!" Ruby's leg was bouncing at, like, superlight speed. Which, as everyone knows, is just like regular light speed, but superer.

Weiss stepped across the line and Ruby's half of the split screen flashed red and yellow and orange as a giant explosion went off on the other side of the tower.

And Ruby's leg stilled.

'_It's happening!'_

With a click she sprinted toward the explosion as the game's HUD prompted them to 'Defend the CCT Tower!', Weiss following close behind. "Don't worry about the missiles," she advised. "They'll damage your Aura a bit, but it'll regen before we get into combat. They're just for immersion."

On cue, trucks with the White Fang logo spray painted on the side in red came tearing in on the other side of the air strip, missiles arching out from launchers mounted in the truck beds. Weiss let out an audible gasp as the projectiles crashed into the pavement around them causing dust to obscure their shared screen and making the cameras shake while their characters stumbled.

Their health bars both flashed red and dipped down a bit, but soon started recharging. "That's our Aura?" Weiss asked, pointing toward the top of the screen.

"Yep! You have a lot 'cause they made Ironbro really tanky to make up for his low mobility."

Weiss frowned. "Okay… but why is it coming back so fast?"

Ruby smiled at the logical question. "They sacrificed realism for good gameplay. Your Aura starts to come back if you stay out of combat for a few seconds."

"I see. That would be nice," Weiss remarked with a dry chuckle that Ruby echoed.

"For real! We would never need to stop killing Grimm! You and I could save the world by ourselves!"

Weiss turned and gave Ruby a quirky little smile.

"Watch out!" Ruby cried out-Weiss didn't see the bullets start flying at them 'cause she wasn't looking at the screen.

Entering Gamer Mode, Ruby focused as she dove into the rush of sword and gun toting baddies. Fighting the White Fang troops always made her a lot sadder than fighting the Atlesians, even though she knew the Fang were the bad guys. But some of them had cute bunny ears or floofy puppy tails! And now that she'd met Velvet killing the bunny faunus made her _extra_ sad.

She had to remind herself that the cute bunny faunus in the White fang were _bad guy_ bunny faunus. Velvet was a good guy, and even if the bad guys were as cute as her they still needed to be stopped.

Still, blowing them up in a video game was pretty sad. At least most of the Atlesians were just robots. Blowing robots up was okay, right? Not that she'd want to blow up Atlesian Knights in real life! They were good guys.

Her messy train of thought distracted her as she played on autopilot until Weiss let out a surprised squeak.

"That guy hit me into a wall!"

Ruby glanced over at Weiss' screen-screen peeking is a super capital crime when playing _against _someone (that Yang did _all_ the time 'cause she's a dirty, rotten cheater!), but it was totally fine in co-op. Weiss had just been smacked by the heavy hit of a bear faunus wielding a giant hammer (bigger than Nora's, but nowhere near as cool 'cause it didn't turn into a grenade launcher!).

"Yeah, you gotta watch out for when the bear faunus charge up their big swing-it'll knock you back and stun you if you hit terrain."

"Oh." Weiss was playing really slow, pressing the buttons deliberately and one at a time, clearly not comfortable with the controls. She was also running away a lot, especially whenever an enemy flashed red from Ironbro's semblance. As a result, she was taking quite a bit of damage but not really dealing a whole lot in return.

And Ruby was off by herself doing her own thing! '_Ruby, stop being a terrible friend!'_ She was playing like she was playing with Yang or Uncle Qrow, not someone that had never touched a video game before twenty minutes ago.

She double jumped over towards Weiss' Ironbro, activating Nidas' charged up semblance when she hit the ground. The resulting shockwave killed or knockback all the enemies that were conglomerating around Weiss. "Don't worry, fair princess!" she chirped with a grin. "I will save you!"

"You're a dolt."

Ruby giggled as she helped Weiss, who was tunnel visioned on slowly lining up headshots on all the distant shooters, scrunching her eyebrows cutely as she concentrated. That meant Ruby should take out the melee guys! That made the most sense anyway-Nidas was a bit better at close combat.

"Focus the gunners on the trucks!"

Weiss listened to her, turning her attention and aim on said targets. When she pulled the trigger, though, Ironbro went into his reload animation, and Weiss frowned in confusion. "Why can't I shoo-oh, is he reloading?"

Crap. Yet another basic thing Ruby hadn't thought to mention.

"Yeah! Ironbro's revolver has six shots before you have to reload. You can reload early by pressing 'X'-that one." She quickly pointed to the button when Weiss looked down to find it.

"Okay."

Weiss' character was just now finishing reloading. "Yeah, Ironbro has a really long reload time 'cause it's a revolver, but it's balanced 'cause it hits _really_ hard. Like his regular shots hit harder than Fuchsia's sniper rifle, and its headshots hit almost as hard."

Nodding absently, Weiss put on her concentrating face again as she lined up her shots. She was going really slow, but she was getting headshots every time!

"Come stand on this capture point! Once we get it the airships will bring in some Knight reinforcements."

Ruby waited until Ironbro was standing within the glowy projected circle before she dashed Nidas off. They only needed one person to capture the objective, and it would be more efficient for Ruby to keep the melee attackers well away from the point so they wouldn't interrupt the countdown.

Weiss seemed to be focusing really hard. And she was doing pretty good! Wayyyy better than Ruby had expected someone to do their first time holding a controller. But she also seemed really confused by a lot of the things happening on the screen, and she wasn't asking any questions… Ruby was worried that maybe it was because Weiss thought she was just a bad teacher, but she'd also noticed that Weiss didn't really like to ask questions in general. She seemed to not like admitting not knowing something.

"Remember to use your roll!" Ruby advised her. "And take cover behind stuff when people are shooting at you."

She only barely noticed Weiss blush and frown beside her. "Sorry, that sounds like really obvious stuff, huh," her partner sighed.

'_Man, she has such a pretty voice,'_ Ruby thought for definitely-not-the-first-time. It was like crystal bells and a winter breeze at the same time. She reeeeeally wanted to hear Weiss sing, but that was probably something she needed to be more comfortable around Ruby for. And for whatever reason Weiss seemed like she really didn't want Ruby to watch videos of her singing at the RCG, which Ruby didn't totally understand. It would be so awesome to see Weiss around a bunch of celebrities! She probably looked prettier than all of them anyway, and Ruby was a hundred percent positive her singing had been awesome, so she wasn't sure what there was to be nervous or embarrassed about.

But then again, she _didn't _know. And Weiss must have her reasons for not wanting to Ruby to watch it. So Ruby should respect that, 'cause that's what good friends and partners do, right? She was pretty sure that was right.

"Don't worry about it!" she said, pulling herself away yet another distracting tangent. "You're just not used to video games! You gotta get used to how to think and move and stuff. It takes a while." She leaned over and dropped her voice to a whisper. "Yang still sucks at it sometimes."

"WHAT DOES YANG SUCK AT?!"

Ruby and Weiss both screeched and jumped a solid thousand feet into the air.

"YANG-UH!" Ruby whined before her butt had even fallen back onto the couch, hitting 'Start' to pause the game and turning to glare at her obnoxious big sister.

Yang was standing there, hands on her hips, with a massive grin plastered across her dumb jerk-face. "Wow, jumpy much, scaredy-cats?"

Weiss scowled and shot a glare at Yang. "You're insufferable!" she spat as she straightened her skirt and tried to regain some of her princessy posture.

Yang's grin only widened even more. "Nah!" she disagreed, wrapping an arm around Ruby before the totally innocent girl had a chance to react and playfully (and evilly) rubbing a fist into the top of her head. "Ruby's been suffering me for years!"

Grunting with effort, Ruby tried quite unsuccessfully to pry Yang's arm from around her collarbone. "Yang, you suck!"

That only got her a cackle from the big dumb brute. "I know. I heard. But what do I suck at?"

"No, you just suck!" Ruby clarified as she tried to throw all of her weight down and make Yang's grip slip. It didn't work. Not that she'd been expecting it to. Yang was way too strong. All those dumb pushups.

"Hmm. Eloquent," teased Yang.

Weiss huffed at that. "I'm surprised you even know what that word means."

Yang narrowed her eyes and raised her free hand to point a finger at Weiss, clearly about to dish out some super mean insult, but then… it never came.

Confused at the silence, Ruby twisted around to see Yang's face had turned thoughtful, her eyes shifting between Weiss and Ruby's red controller in her hands and the tv where their game was paused.

"So… whatcha two doin'?"

Weiss rolled her eyes and muttered, "Isn't it obvious?" while Ruby beamed.

"I'm teaching Weiss how to play HR2! She agreed to play with me if I read our history chapter and answered the questions and stuff, and I did!" She was really proud of herself for getting through all that boring studying. But it wasn't too boring with Weiss! _And _it was way easier! She still remembered the names of all the founders!

Ozran Tree.

W-name-that-wasn't-Winter-'cause-that's-Weiss'-sister Mistraleisin.

Double-Dune. Wait… It was a flower, like her name! Uh... Dandelion! Dandelion Dune.

And Ryan Ironbro, great-great-grandsomething of General Ironbro, Iron Fist of Atlas.

… Okay, maybe she still needed to do some work on that. But still! She actually read through an entire history textbook chapter! She'd never done that before!

Yang glanced curiously down at Ruby-whose head was still poking out awkwardly from under Yang's shoulder-than back at Weiss. "Really?" Her eyebrow raised in surprise.

For her part, Weiss seemed to find the carpet _really_ interesting. "It seemed fair," she mumbled quietly, almost to herself.

Slowly, the pressure around Ruby's neck slackened as Yang's grip eased up, the girl still squinting at Weiss thoughtfully. As soon as the grip was weak enough that Ruby was confident she could break out, she did, reaching up and yanking her sister's arm away and using a short burst of her semblance to dash and hide behind Weiss so Yang couldn't grab her again.

Weiss blinked in surprise at the sudden movement, her eyes latching on to one of the several rose petals Ruby's semblance had created and following its lazy path to the ground.

"So who ya playin'?" Yang asked, though Weiss didn't seem to realize she was being talked to.

"Ironbro!" Ruby answered for her partner, her voice making Weiss snap back to reality. "Apparently she knows him!"

Yang pushed out her bottom lip and nodded slowly, her eyes interested and impressed. "Really? That's pretty neat."

"Yep!" Ruby agreed eagerly. Weiss _was_ pretty neat. "And after tomorrow we'll all know Nidas!"

"Professor Rustheart," Weiss corrected her softly but sternly.

"Right. Professor Rustheart."

"So how do you like the game, Weiss?" Yang asked, watching Weiss' face closely.

Weiss seemed to notice how weirdly attentive Yang was being and sorta squirmed away, turning her body towards Ruby while she put her impassive Ice Queen face on.

"It's fine," she said tersely.

Fine? She'd been having fun!... At least… Ruby had thought she was.

Weiss glanced up through her lashes at Ruby and gave her a reassuring lip twitch.

Okay. She was having fun. So why wouldn't she say that?...

Ruby looked at the way Weiss was standing-one hand grabbing her other elbow, the controller clutched tightly in her free hand, shoulders turned towards Ruby… and away from Yang. And Yang was leaning on her hands on the back of the couch, being all weirdly hyper observant.

"Yang, go away."

As soon as they came out of her mouth, the words surprised Ruby almost as much as they did Yang. But Yang was making Weiss uncomfortable! Heck, she was making Ruby kinda uncomfortable with how intensely she was watching Weiss.

Yang looked more shocked than hurt and Ruby's order, but Ruby immediately felt guilty anyway. She loved Yang! Telling her to go away felt so… off. But Weiss clearly wanted Yang to not be there. There was some really weird… weirdness going on between these two, and Ruby want Weiss to go back to happy, laughy Weiss.

"I-jus-w-we were having fun," she stuttered lamely in explanation. "And y-you're bein' weird. Plus, you stink!" That last part was definitely true. Yang smelled like Gym Yang, sweaty and kinda smoky-she tended to get worked up when she worked out (especially when she was listening to music) and her semblance kicked in and made her sweat steam and left her smelling weird as frickity frack for hours.

"_You_ stink," Yang grumbled in awkward embarrassment, backing away to run to their room.

Self consciously, Ruby took a subtle sniff toward her armpit. She definitely didn't want to smell bad next to Weiss, who seemed to always smell like oceans and vanilla cakes and princess castles.

"You smell fine," Weiss whispered to her, another tiny lip twitch lighting up her face, her eyes sparkling in amusement at Ruby's sniff.

"I do?"

Her partner nodded. "Of course. You always smell like roses."

Smiling widely, Ruby stuck her tongue out at her sister. "Ha! Here that, Yang? I smell like flowers. And _you_ smell like Zwei! After he went swimming! In a pool! Full of… beer!"

Ha! Take that, Yang! Beer already smelled bad enough (and tasted even worse-Uncle Qrow let her try a sip once while he and Dad were watching the windball game, and… never again). But beer on wet dog? Yang couldn't top that insult! Huehuehuehu-

"Yeah, well… you're short!" Yang snarked back with a cheeky, playful sneer before running away.

Ruby snorted at her sister's pathetic attempt at a comeback. Ruby-1, Yang 0. Well, more like Ruby-1, Yang-10,000, but we weren't counting all the insults from before thirty seconds ago, right?

Although Ruby was pretty short…

Weiss gave her a grateful smile, clearly relaxing again now that Yang was gone. "You're not short, Ruby, you're just younger than us," she reassured Ruby gently after seeing the frown on Ruby's face. She looked down at herself. "_Me_, on the other hand..."

"Whaaat? You're not short! You're, like, eight inches taller than me!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her with a smirk. "Either you don't know how to count or you don't know how long an inch is. I'm _maybe_ three inches taller than you, and only because I'm wearing heels."

Ruby glanced down at the offending shoes. She still had no idea how Weiss balanced in those things, much less _fought_ in them. "How tall are you without them?" Excitement seeped into her as she considered that maybe she and Weiss were the same height! That would mean that Ruby was the perfect height!

Weiss pursed her lips, contemplating whether or not she wanted to find out how they compared without her cheater shoes on. She reached some sort of decision, though, because she kicked her heels of with a sigh.

Ruby pulled her own boots off with a grin, almost falling over in the process, but Weiss reached a slender arm out and grabbed her shoulder to stabilize her.

"How are you so fast and yet so klutzy?" she wandered aloud.

"It's my super power!" Ruby chirped, flinging her shoes to the side and straightening up with a smile.

"I thought that was your super speed. Or your super stomach."

Ruby frowned. She _had_ said that, hadn't she. Darn. "Well, it's my _third_ super power!"

"You're a super klutz?"

Ruby pouted. "Stop changing the subject! We're trying to figure out how tall I am compared to you-or how short you are compared to me!"

Weiss smiley-eye rolled and straightened her already super straight back, trying to be sneaky as she raised her chin ever so slightly.

Narrowing her eyes playfully, Ruby did the same.

Weiss slowly started raising up on her toes, and Ruby followed suit-until she tipped forward and sent them both crashing into the couch.

"Aah! Rubyyyy!"

"I'm sorry!"

"You're such a dolt!"

"I know! I'm sorry!"

Ruby jumped back up to her feet and reached down to pull Weiss back up, but her partner's gaze had flickered back to the tv screen where their game was still waiting for them.

"Oh, you wanna keep playing?" Ruby bounced excitedly as she jumped back to her spot next to Weiss on the couch.

"Actually…" Weiss turned to her with apologetic eyes.

Nooooooo! Weiss hated it. She wasn't having any fun at all and she'd never want to play video games with Ruby ever ag-

"It's getting a little late. It's almost eleven. I'd like to go to bed, if that's… okay?" she seemed a little confused as she finished the sentence, like she wasn't sure if she was asking for permission or not.

"Oh." That wasn't _too_ bad. Weiss didn't say she hated video games or playing with Ruby…

"I'd be happy to play some more tomorrow!" Weiss quickly rushed on, smiling when the words made Ruby's face light up again.

"Really?!" Maybe Weiss could be her second gaming buddy! Yang was great, but having Weiss to play with too would also be great! Twice the greatness!

"Sure," Weiss confirmed with a confident nod. "This is fun. And… cool." Ruby bit down on her lip to keep from snickering at the way Weiss said that word. "We can play some more tomorrow? _After_ homework?"

Darn. Ruby pouted at that last qualification, but she supposed that was good. That was what Dad always told her and Yang-no games until your schoolwork is done! But they never listened to him. He was just a big dumb adult that was trying to be needlessly responsible like all the other big dumb adults!

Weiss wasn't big, or dumb, _or_ an adult, though. In fact, she was small (like Ruby!) and super smart and only a couple years older than Ruby! So… maybe being responsible wasn't always lame and boring. Or at least, it was a lame boringness that Ruby needed to learn to deal with?

It shouldn't be too hard if Weiss was there with her!

"Deal!" she agreed happily.

They stood from the couch. Ruby picked up her boots and unsynced her scroll from the tv while Weiss gathered her shiny white high heels, then they started walking back to the room.

"Wait, we didn't compare our heights to each other!" Ruby realized. She'd gotten distracted! How did that happen? She was smarter than this!

"Oh really?" Weiss remarked, doing a terrible job at trying to sound nonchalant. "That's a darn shame…"

Stamping her foot, Ruby stopped in the middle of the hallway. "Weiss! Come stand next to me!"

Weiss turned and flashed her a teasing grin. "Never!" She skipped a small step, playfully increasing the distance between them.

"Hey! Get back here!" Ruby dove forward to try to tackle her partner, eliciting a squeal from the girl as she took off down the hallway.

Slipping into her semblance, Ruby chased Weiss down, Weiss cackling adorably as the wave of rose-scented air brushed by her. She reached Weiss just as the girl managed to scan her scroll across the electronic lock on their door, wrapping her arms around her waist to tackle her.

Unfortunately, while in her semblance she had barely any effect on the physical world, and as angelic and beautiful and awesome as Weiss was, she was still just a physical person. When Ruby slammed into her she was barely knocked back a step (with another squeal), but Ruby bounced off of her and went spinning and rolling down more of the hallway.

Weiss dashed into their room with a giggle. Ruby pushed herself back up and leapt forward just in time to get a face full of door as Weiss slammed it shut in front of her.

It didn't hurt-in fact, Ruby barely felt it at all-but it did stop her in her tracks.

"Frickity frack!" she muttered to herself as she pushed herself back into the world so she could pull out her scroll and unlock the door.

"Rawr!" she shouted as she burst into the room, only to find a wide eyed Blake blinking at her in surprise from her bed, a book resting on her knees.

Ruby blinked.

Blake blinked.

Ruby blinked.

Blake's eyes flickered over to Ruby and Weiss' bathroom, and Ruby got the message.

"Weiss! I'm coming to get you!"

She tried to shove open the door, but it was locked!

"_No, s'op_!" Weiss' windchimey voice squeaked from behind the barrier. "_I'm 'rushing 'y teesh_!"

How the heck had she gotten her toothbrush so fast?

"Weeeeeiiiiiiss! Get out here right now!"

"_No_!"

"... Please?"

"..."

The bathroom behind Ruby opened up and Yang stumbled out in her cotton sleeping bra and pajama shorts, drying her hair with a towel. Ruby was way used to seeing Yang without a shirt on by now so she didn't freak out like she had when she'd seen Blake without one. She did just barely noticed Blake blush and look away from Yang out of the corner of her eye, though. What was that about?

"What in Vytal is going on?" Yang demanded, fixing Ruby with a bemused glare.

"Weiss is hiding in the bathroom!" Ruby chirped, assuming that would explain everything.

"Why?"

'_Oh. Uhh…' _Why was Ruby chasing her again? Did she need a reason? It was pretty fun… Oh, right!

"She won't let me see how tall I am compared to her when she's not wearing her dumb heels!"

"'_y 'eels are _not _du'!"_ Weiss yelled behind the door.

Yang's eyes widened in surprise at Weiss' playful reaction. She turned and looked questioningly at Blake, but the girl just shrugged. With a heavy sigh, Yang shook her head as she tossed her towel onto the floor in her and Blake's bathroom.

"You really are something else, Rubes."

"What did I do?" Ruby asked, confused.

"Just melted the iciest heart ever," Yang answered as she floofed her hair out with her fingers.

'_What in the world is she talking about?'_

Blake grinned up at Yang from behind her book. "I thought _you_ were the hot one," she quipped.

Yang eyed Blake sideways through her lashes and-did she just _wink_ at Blake? What the heck?

"Glad you think so," she replied with that super confident Yang Smirk.

Blake blushed again and hid her face behind her book.

What in the world was going on with those two?!

Those lines of thought were instantly banished from her head when the sound of her and Weiss' bathroom door opened made her turn. Weiss poked her head out and met Ruby's eyes before making a soft "eep!"

Once again Ruby ended up smacking into a just-barely-shut-door. "Weiss!" she yelled, banging with her fists on this dumb hunk of wood that kept getting in her way. "Weiss get let me in!"

"_No_!"

How could Ruby get Weiss to let her in. Maybe appeal to her responsible, adulty side?

"But I need to brush my teeth before bed, too!"

The long silence on the other side of the wall confirmed that the argument was at least making Weiss think about opening the door.

"... _Okay, but only if you promise not to try to see how tall you are to me_!"

"But Wei-iessss!" Ruby whined. "You were fine with it before! You took your du-your heels off and everything!"

"_Yeah, well I changed my mind_!"

Ugh! Ruby just wanted to see if they were the same height! That was no big deal, right? And how cool would it be if they were?

"Okay, fiiiine!" she sighed, locking in a promise she realllly didn't want to keep. Maybe she could sneakily compare their heights some other way…

"_Promise_?"

"Promise."

The click of the door unlocking allowed Ruby to jump into the bathroom, a smile on her face as she was simply excited to see her friend again.

Weiss had pulled her ponytail off, her long white hair hanging over her periwinkle nightie, her big blue eyes smirking and dancing in amusement.

This made Ruby so happyyyyy! Playful, happy Weiss was so awesome and cute and Ruby had made that happen! That made her feel way more accomplished than anything else she could remember doing, even getting into Beacon! How many people could say they'd gotten Weiss Schnee to smile? She bet the answer could be counted on one hand.

And she was one of them!

She didn't know how to express how happy that made her, though, so she settled on giving Weiss an impish poke in the tummy, hoping the friendly physical contact would say what she couldn't with words.

"Ow! What was _that_ for?" Weiss indignantly huffed, a Princess Pout setting on her face as she covered her stomach with her arms.

Ruby simply shrugged, unable to provide an answer other than an even wider smile.

Weiss smiley-eye rolled. "You're such a dolt," she muttered.

When Ruby just nodded happily in agreement, Weiss raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well? Go brush your teeth!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Ruby chirped as she bounced over to the sink. She watched Weiss shake her head in the mirror, a small smile on her lips, before turning to walk out to the bedroom.

A couple minutes later Ruby had her teeth brushed, face washed, and pajamas on. She found the bedroom was now lit solely by the lamp next to Blake's bed, her teammates all in their pajamas and beds.

"Well, Team RWBY!" she said with a smile, "Everybody ready for combat class tomorrow?"

"Woohoo!" Yang cheered, punching a fist into the air.

"Do you remember the time and place for it this time, oh captain?" Weiss asked (only somewhat) teasingly.

"Y-yeah! Of course I do!" She glanced desperately over at Blake questioningly, but the girl just grinned at her terrible predicament and raised her eyebrows like she was expecting an answer too.

'_Darn you, Blake, ya durn traitor!'_

Weiss sighed heavily. "Noon to six, lobby of the Battle Center."

Scrunching her nose, Ruby let out a huff that she hoped sounded as superior as Weiss' huffs. "Y-yeah, Weiss. I said I know!"

"Uh huh."

"Listen here, you-"

"Rubes!" Yang cut her off, rolling on her side to give Ruby a smoldering glare. "Nobody has, does, or ever will believe you remember our class schedule. Now pipe down and get in bed!"

Ruby pouted at what she knew was Yang being a teasing jerky-jerk. "What's got your knockers in a knick?" she grumbled, referencing a silly phrase Uncle Qrow always said when Yang went all firey with her semblance.

Yang chuckled and pulled one of her pillows, resting it over her arm and laying across it as she stuck her tongue out at Ruby. "My arms are so sorrrre," she confessed. "I went really ham showing up Nora in the gym, and then some giant third year guy came in and lifted my bench press bar with one hand like it was a freaking dumbbell!"

Blake leaned to the side to look up toward Yang. "Oh, was it that guy on Velvet's team? Yatsushi or something?"

Yang snorted, poking her eyes and nose over the edge of her bunk to meet Blake's eyes. "What is it with you and sushi?"

Gasping, Blake feigned being offended. "Nothing! I just correctly recognize and appreciate its deliciousness! There is nothing wrong with that!"

Ruby wondered what those two had been up to together that they were having seafood-based inside jokes.

"She's right," Weiss chimed in. "Sushi is quite palatable."

Yang snorted a light laugh again. "Yes, well I find ribs and steaks to be far more 'palatable'."

"Yeah, well you're an animal," Weiss teased dismissively. Ruby noticed Blake shoot Weiss a funny look as she climbed up to her bunk. "Sushi is a food of sophistication and refinement. Right, Blake?"

Blake raised an eyebrow. "Uh, sure… I just like the way it tastes."

Yang let out a booming laugh and reached down to give Blake a high five that the girl completed with a satisfied grin.

Ruby settled down on the edge of her bed where she could easily lean over and see Weiss, and Blake and Yang were easily visible across the room.

"Bah!" Weiss huffed, turning towards the wall. "I guess I won't take us out to the critically acclaimed sushi restaurant in the city this weekend!" The light tone in her voice told Ruby the princess meant it as a joke, which made her smile.

"Wait, what acclaimed sushi restaurant?" Blake asked, the phrase making her eyes go wide and her bow twitch.

"... I actually don't know of any in Vale," Weiss admitted, turning back to the rest of the room. "I'm sure there is one, though. Would you guys like to find one this weekend?"

Wow. Weiss was inviting the whole team out to dinner? This was awesome!

"I'd love to," Blake said with a smile.

Yang glanced at her partner, then Weiss, then Ruby and her beaming smile, then back at Weiss. "... Fiiiine," she sighed, rolling onto her back again. "Hopefully they'll have some nice Vacuan rub ribs or something and not just a bunch of rice and fish."

Weiss rolled her eyes and leaned over to look up at Ruby.

Ruby smiled down at her partner, but then slowly realized there was a question in her eyes.

"Wait, what?" Ruby stammered, afraid she'd missed something.

"Would you like to go get dinner at a sushi restaurant on Saturday?" Weiss asked, a little worry creeping into her eyes.

'_Oh!'_

"What? Of course, Weiss! I didn't think that needed saying, sorry."

Weiss' worry disappeared, and she gave Ruby one of her signature tiny smiles.

"Yay, wooo, team bonding, fish, ra ra ra," Yang drawled. "Can we go to sleep now?"

Blake scoffed lightly and clicked off her lamp, leaving the room in darkness but for the moonlight seeping through the windows and the blinking lights of their scrolls and Weiss and Yang's laptops. "Drama queen," she muttered teasingly.

"I'm too tired to fight you over that," Yang responded with a groan.

A comfortable quiet settled over the room, interrupted only by the occasional rustling of sheets as the girls wiggled to get comfortable.

"Good night, Team RWBY," Ruby called softly into the darkness.

"Good night, Ruby," three voices called back to her.

She fell asleep with a smile.


	11. Seeding 1-11

**Oof. 12,000 words. 25 pages. I am dead. **

**Sorry for the wait, everybody. I've gotten settled into my new job now and given a lot more to do. Kinda sucks. I'll do better in the future. **

* * *

Weiss sighed as Ruby tried and failed to figure out where they were going for the eighth time this morning.

"I'm pretty sure the Battle Center is the other direction," the brunette grumbled to the team as she trudged behind Weiss.

"Ruby!" Weiss stopped and turned to grab her partner's chin and pull it to line up with the building she was _trying_ to lead them to. "You see that domed building over there behind the Arboretum?"

The brat pouted adorably into Weiss' hand. "The Arbo-what?"

Groaning, Weiss shook the girl's head lightly. "Do you see the giant domed building over there?" She pointed an imperious finger to get Ruby to look in the right direction.

"... Yeah, I see it…" she grumbled.

Weiss let go of Ruby's chin and fought down an amused smile at Ruby's drama. "_That's_ the Battle Center."

"Pretty sure that's the library," Yang cut in, probably just because she wanted to argue with Weiss.

"That's not the library," stated Blake.

"Pfft, how would _you_ know?" the blonde teased with a grin, earning a raised eyebrow from her partner.

"Can we _please _just get to class?" Weiss said, already walking away.

"Relax, Weiss!" Ruby chirped as she skipped up to Weiss and fell in step beside her. "We're nowhere near being late!"

A loud snort from Yang sounded behind them. "Yeah, 'cause Ice Queen dragged us out of our rooms thirty minutes early."

Whipping her head around so fast her ponytail smacked Ruby in the face, Weiss snapped at the fiery idiot, "There's nothing wrong with being early! Besides, I thought we'd be in the cafeteria a lot longer waiting for Ruby to finish eating a mountain of cookies."

Ruby giggled at that while she rubbed her nose where Weiss' hair had hit her. "Nope! I can eat super big amounts of cookies at the same rate as other people eat normal food. There's actually an equation for it, and it has its own variable! I call it the Ruby Cookie Constant."

Weiss couldn't help the chuckle that escaped her. "Oh, really? I'd love to see that equation some time. It would be nice to be able to calculate your cookie intake."

Ruby blinked and scratched the back of her head with a nervous smile. "Heh… Yeah! No problem. Though I gotta warn you, it's _very_ complicated. And it requires _exact_ counts of all the different types of cookies I'm eating at the time. Plus you gotta calculate the logarithms, and that's really difficult. I don't wanna scare you with the big maths or anything." She pursed her lips and looked off to the side in a not-very-subtle attempt to hide the smile that was creeping on her lips.

"Ruby, do you even know what a logarithm is?" Weiss asked, full well knowing the answer.

Ruby's eyes flickered to Weiss' for the briefest instant before they fell to the ground. "... No," she admitted with a pout. "I was just hoping you wouldn't either."

"I do."

"Darn."

Yang laughed and patted Ruby on the back. "It's okay, Ruby. I don't think either one of us is going to be able to out-intellectualize our partners. Should probably challenge Weiss to an eating contest or something instead."

"Out-intellectualize?" Blake repeated, smirking.

"Yeah!" Yang said with her trademark confidence. "It's a word only used by those like me and Ruby that are… intellectual adjacent! We're smart, but not with books and words and stuff. Which is why we get our own words! Like… out-intellectualize."

Blake nodded seriously while Weiss rolled her eyes. "I see, I see," the raven-haired girl played along. "Sounds like you're very sophisticated."

"Yep!" Yang ruffled Ruby's hair, making Ruby squirm away into Weiss' side. Weiss still hated physical contact with others, but…Ruby was okay, right? Ruby would never hurt her. Then again, she'd thought the same about her mother and father, once upon a time. But Ruby wasn't anything like them.

"Me and Ruby, members of the sophistry!" Yang declared.

"That's not at _all_ what that word means," Weiss said tersely, gently nudging Ruby off of her.

Miffed, Yang turned to her. "What? Doesn't it mean, like, sophisticated society?"

"Not even close," Blake giggled.

Ruby patted Yang's arm consolingly, but she had a mischievous grin on. "It's okay Yang. We're just not able to out-intellectualize our partners. Maybe you should challenge Blake to an arm wrestle or something.

"Yeah, hard pass," snorted Blake as Yang glared at her sister. "I enjoy having all my knuckles in place."

"Awww, I would only break your hand a _little_ bit, Blakey-Blake," Yang laughed.

Weiss cringed at that. "Yikes. Do you feel unsafe with your partner, Blake? Should we talk to Professor Ozpin?" She was only _kind of _teasing.

Yang's eyes narrowed as she inspected Weiss' face, trying to figure out if had been a joke or not, but Blake just smiled lightly and hooked an arm around Yang's elbow. "Nah. She's just a big, sometimes fiery teddy bear. Besides, she couldn't hurt me if she wanted to. I'm too ninja."

That got a burst of giggles out of Ruby. "That's true! You were, like, super ninja awesome jumping and flying around against the Nevermore! That was so cool!"

Blake beamed at the compliment, but Yang turned her narrowed eyes to her partner and mumbled, "I could totally catch you if I wanted to, for the record."

Slipping her arm away from Yang's, Blake took a teasing step away. "Seeing is believing," she taunted, bending her knees and rolling onto the balls of her feet.

"Pssh, whatever," Yang dismissed her, turning to Ruby and-

Weiss' eyes couldn't even follow Yang when she leapt out to grab her partner, but Blake was clearly expecting it. She jumped backwards with nothing but a light smirk.

"That's it, c'mere you!" Yang shouted, tearing into a sprint after the fleeing girl in black, letting out a loud, animalistic "Raaaaah" as she chased Blake down the sidewalk.

Another happy giggle jingled out of Ruby, but she seemed content to stay by Weiss' side, something Weiss was surprised to find she was immensely happy about. She would have thought Ruby would love to play tag, but… then again, it would probably be a joke to her if she used her semblance.

"I'm on a team with a bunch of children." she jokingly lamented.

"Isn't it great!" Ruby replied with a light skip.

Great? Well… it wasn't as bad as she had been expecting-she was willing to give it that, at least. She had actually quite enjoyed playing Ruby's silly game last night, something she _never_ would have expected. The way she'd needed to move her fingers so quickly in response to what was happening on the screen… it had felt like playing the piano, but more reactive. And Ruby had been an absolute bundle of joy the whole night. _And _she'd realized Yang was making Weiss… antsy. Not nervous. Nobody made Weiss nervous. She was a Schnee. But Yang had been extremely… aggressive last night when she'd been looking at her, and Weiss found it… off-putting.

But Ruby had realized that, and helped. That was nice. It must have been weird for her to tell her sister that she loved so much to go away. Weiss could never imagine saying that to Winter. But Ruby had done it.

Right before chasing her down the hallway like a hooligan. That was… fun.

There! She'd admitted it. She'd had fun. It was okay to have fun sometimes, right? She was fairly confident she would do fine with this schoolwork-she already knew pretty much everything they'd gone over in class so far. So fun was… okay. In moderation.

That reminded her…

"By the way," she said, turning to Ruby, "last night when you tried to tackle me…"

Ruby blanched like she thought she was in trouble, which Weiss found adorably childish. "Y-yeah?"

Suppressing a smile, Weiss finished her question. "Why didn't it… _do_ anything?"

Realization dawned and Ruby's face resumed its overly happy norm. "Oh, I was in my semblance!"

Weiss waited, but a more thorough explanation didn't seem to be forthcoming. "Right, and…?"

"Oh, right." Ruby rubbed her chin with her knuckles in thought. "So… when I use my semblance, what does it look like to you?"

Weiss blinked. What _did_ it look like? "One moment you're there, the next you're replaced by a red spirally streak that sheds rose petals?"

Eyes unfocusing, Ruby nodded. "Yeah, so… in that moment in between I kind of… poof into another dimension."

"What?"

Ruby grinned nervously, clearly aware she wasn't doing a great job at explaining. "When I go into my Rose Form-that's what I call the 'red spirally streak'-I'm still, like, _here_. It just feels like my body is in… like, in another layer of the world, and all that's left of me in the real world is an outline, and the rest of my mass is replaced by the rose petals and stuff…"

Weiss absently mused that Ruby said "like" far too much, but that took a back seat as she pondered the description. "So when you're in… 'Rose Form' you're… weaker?" That must be what Ruby was getting at, why her tackle hadn't done anything more than nudge Weiss to the side.

Ruby shook her head. "I wouldn't really say weaker. I mean, it comes across that way, but it's because I just have less effect on the real world, and the real world has less effect on me. Including gravity and wind and stuff. It's why I can jump higher and move faster-though my semblance lets me do that anyway-and I don't get all that hurt if I'm hit while in Rose Form. IT also means I don't hit very heard, and everything sounds quieter, and everything looks red... "

"Interesting." There were a lot of potential combat applications with that effect, assuming Ruby was able to activate her semblance quickly enough…

"Yeah," Ruby agreed. "I wish my mom was still around to help explain some of this stuff though."

Wait… Weiss turned to Ruby in surprise. "Did she have the same semblance?" she asked quickly. She'd never heard of anyone other than the Schnees having a hereditary semblance.

"No, but it was similar," Ruby amended, making Weiss deflate slightly. "She also went into another dimension, kinda-we think it was the same one. But instead of her body staying together here like an outline, she would just burst into a bunch of rose petals and spread outward. Then she could reform herself at any of the petals. It basically was a short range teleport."

"Oh, wow." That would be an incredibly powerful semblance. "That sounds pretty... cool."

Damn, it still felt so awkward to say that word. But Ruby used it to describe pretty much everything-well, that and "awesome", but Weiss didn't feel like being that effusive-so she should at least try to figure out how to use it in conversation with her partner. From the way Ruby kept snickering every time she said it, she probably wasn't doing it correctly.

"Yeah! I don't remember it all too well, but just thinking about it is really neat! Although Mom had a harder time coming back than I did."

"What do you mean?"

Ruby shrugged lightly. "When I'm on the other side, it takes effort to come back over. And a lot of times I… I don't really _want _to?" She said it like a question, as if unsure that was how she should phrase it. "It just feels so much better to be in that weird dimension where I'm untouchable… And the longer I'm on the other side the harder it is to get back. I've always been able to force myself back eventually, but when I was younger I'd sometimes get… lost. Mom's voice always brought me back, though. And after she… was gone… Yang called me back instead."

Weiss frowned as Ruby spoke. It seemed alarming that Ruby could get lost in her semblance. Semblances were supposed to be advantages, not liabilities. Her own had no drawbacks-at least, none that she knew of, and Winter had never mentioned any.

"You're okay now, though, right?"

Bumping her shoulder gently, Ruby gave Weiss a big grin. "Yep! No issues getting back now, don't worry. I'm not disappearing on you. Yang would kill me if I did."

A loud squeal pulled their attention away before Weiss could respond. Up ahead Yang and Blake were both rolling in the grass. It looked like Yang the Monster had finally caught poor Blake… and was tickling the girl mercilessly.

"No! Stop it! Ya-Yang, STOP! Ahahaha! Sto-st-ssss!" Her protests just devolved into wordless panting as she started failing to pull enough air into her lungs.

"Shouldn't we help her?" Weiss asked, slightly fearing that Yang would keep going until Blake passed out from lack of oxygen.

Ruby just shook her head with a giant grin. "I'm just glad it's not me she's tickling for once. And trust me, you don't want to try to interrupt her when she's tickling someone. Dad saved me from her once, and she just ran at him instead."

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "How did that go?"

"I mean, it didn't _work_, per se. Dad just picked her up and threw her across the yard and she ended up knocking over a good chunk of the fence. But I doubt either one of us would be able to do that…"

'_... What?'_

"Your dad… threw his daughter… into a fence?"

Ruby's smile just got even brighter at Weiss' shocked expression. "Yeah! It was hilarious! Zwei tried to play fetch with her!"

Zwei… Ruby had said that name last night. "Zwei is your dog?" she assumed from 'playing fetch'.

"Yep! The cutest corgi the world has ever seen!"

They'd reached the sidewalk next to where the buffoon and Blake were sprawled out in the grass, Yang stopping her inhumane torture to giving Ruby a look. "Cutest _thing _the world has ever seen, period. Not just corgi."

"Nuh-uh!" Ruby protested. "Dad says I'm cuter!"

Yang gave her sister a look that Weiss might use if someone had asked her what one plus one was. "Yeah, he lied, Rubes. Adults do that sometimes. Zwei is the cutest."

Ruby's pout was… yeah, Weiss had never seen this _Zwei_ fellow, but there was no way he was cuter than Ruby.

Not that it mattered! Cuteness had no bearing on a huntress' abilities, so it didn't matter how cute Ruby was…

"Wait, what else has Dad lied about?" Ruby gasped in shock after a moment.

Scratching her chin in thought, Yang smirked. "You know how he said if you don't eat your veggies then cookies will taste worse? Yeah, that's a lie."

"WHAT?! What the frickity frack am I eating vegetables for then?!"

Weiss put her face in her hands with a sigh. No wonder these two were such a mess. If their one parental figure was telling them ridiculous things like this-and throwing them into fences-then it's a miracle they're as functional as they are now.

Then again, Weiss probably wasn't in any position to judge people's fathers.

Panting heavily, Blake kicked Yang off of her. "You're the worst," she muttered breathlessly.

Yang just smiled in response. "Hey, _you're_ the one that said I couldn't catch you. Not my fault you were _wrong_!"

"I didn't expect… you to jump… that far," Blake huffed between heavy breaths.

"Leg day payed off, whoo!" Yang cheered with a pump of her fist, rolling onto her back and letting out her own heavy, shaky breath. It seemed she'd gotten some cardio out of the chase too.

"You're both idiots," Weiss griped, rolling her eyes to keep from smiling at their ridiculousness.

"Ruby," Yang said, pointing demandingly at her little sister. "Please run the Ice Queen down and give her a good dose of tickles for me. I need to catch my breath."

With another mischievous grin, Ruby turned to Weiss and took what was probably supposed to be an intimidating step forward, waggling her fingers menacingly.

'_Stand your ground, Weiss. Don't play into this game.'_

Struggling hard to fight the urge to run away, Weiss crossed her arms and stared down her partner. "Ruby, no."

Ruby took another step forward.

"Ruby, we're supposed to be going to class."

Another step.

"Be a good team leader and get your team where they need to go."

That did it. Pouting, Ruby dropped her hands to her side and slumped her shoulders. "But Wei-eiss! We have so much extra tiiiiiime!" she whined.

Weiss tilted her head to the side. "Arriving early is good. It shows the professors you care. Don't you _want_ Professor Rustheart to like you?"

That worked too. Ruby's eyes lit up and started scanning side to side like she was thinking something through. "That's true… He _is_ Professor Awesome…"

Weiss rolled her eyes at the dumb nickname Yang had given the man. She really hoped it wouldn't stick. "Come on, dolt," she said, stalking off.

Completely forgetting any desire to chase Weiss down and tickle her, Ruby followed, quickly skipping up to Weiss' side again. "Come on, guys!" she called back to the two clowns that Weiss presumed were still laying in the grass.

She heard Yang mutter something that made Blake laugh, but she didn't want to give the dumb blonde the satisfaction of turning around to glare at her.

"What do you think we're gonna do today?" Ruby asked, leaning over to casually bump shoulders with Weiss. "Think we're practice, like, team maneuvers or something?" She bounced a little in excitement. "Or maybe spar with each other? Or the professor?!" She let out a tiny gasp at her own words.

"No, Ruby. I don't think we're going to spar a world-acclaimed, professional huntsman on our first day in combat class."

Ruby's shoulders slumped. "What about the other ideas, though?"

Weiss bobbed her head side to side as she considered it. "Hmmm, I don't know. There's a lot of basic stuff he may want to test out before we just dive into combat."

"_Tests?"_ whined Ruby. "Like what? They can't give us tests on our first day in a class!"

Weiss smirked and rolled her eyes at her partner. "Not _that_ kind of test, Ruby. He may want to test our semblances, or run an affinity test, or test our Dust casting… You know, basic stuff to get a sense of what we do and how well we do it." With how varied the abilities and styles of the students at the school were, Weiss imagined the professor would want to figure out some sort of baseline to start with for each huntsman or huntress, or at least each team.

"Oh. Right. That makes sense."

They had finally made it to the Battle Center. They stood before the two story domed building, its wide glass front doors the only break in what was otherwise a structure of solid gray stone. Inside, a small lobby, unfurnished but for a few benches along the back wall, was lit by bright white light. Two plain doors on that same wall lead on to the rest of the complex. The side walls were indented with small balconies that looked over metal railing down into the lobby, with doors to the areas deeper in the complex on the far side.

All in all, it was an imposing building.

Yang clearly agreed, letting out a low whistle and craning her head back to keep the top of the dome in sight until they got to the doors and it had disappeared from view behind the wall.

Ruby eagerly dashed forward and tugged one of the heavy glass doors, holding it open for her team. Blake and Weiss both filed in, giving the leader small smiles, and Yang followed, wrapping an arm around Ruby for the two to walk in together.

"Ready to meet a bonafide superhero?" the girl asked her little sister, who nodded quickly with a big smile.

"This _is _where we're supposed to go, right?" Blake asked, voicing Weiss' own thoughts as they glanced around the empty room in confusion.

"Lobby of the Battle Center," Weiss confirmed. "That's what Professor Oobleck said, unless I completely misunderstood him, which is entirely possible…" She walked over to one of the two doors and hesitantly pushed it open to peak inside.

Nothing but a long hallway. On the right wall stretched a window that revealed what looked to be a gun range, individual stalls set up that looked out on a vast, empty chamber dotted with Grimm shaped targets. A door halfway down hall led into the room.

No Professor Rustheart.

Frowning, Weiss shut the door and turned toward the other one to find Blake already peeking into it. She, too, pulled her door closed and met Weiss gaze with a miffed expression.

"Nothing?" she asked.

Weiss shook her head and turned to the other two. Movement beyond them pulled her attention, and she spotted a bunch of figures approaching the entrance to the building. Teams JNPR and KORL were here. That must mean they were in the right place, right?

Her teammates noticed she was looking past them, and they turned to follow her gaze. With a happy squeak, Ruby rushed forward and pushed one of the doors open again, holding it open and giving the two other teams a wave.

"Hey guys!"

"Hello again!" Pyrrha sang out, giving Ruby's arm a light squeeze as she walked in and inspected the lobby with shining emerald eyes.

The rest of the teams filed in with their own greetings and conversations. Everyone had come in their combat gear, weapons included.

Jaune's white, clearly hand-me-down body armor looked a bit more polished than it had been when the students had been launched into the Emerald Forest. '_Perhaps Pyrrha is being a good influence there,'_ Weiss mused. The bulky left bracer that Weiss knew unfolded into a shield seemed to way his arm down, and he seemed to be uncomfortable with the sword that hung on his waist. He kept bumping it with his hand and wiggling the pommel awkwardly.

Pyrrha, in contrast, looked stunning as ever in her red and gold armor set, long red skirt flowing down her legs just as her ponytail flowed down her back. Her Champions' Crown made her look regal, but her small smile and happy eyes kept her from seeming like the intimidating figure they all knew she was on the battlefield. Weiss couldn't help the jealousy she felt at seeing how comfortably and easily Pyrrha made looking elegant and confident. Weiss was constantly minding her appearance and posture and didn't feel like she was even half as successful as Pyrrha was so naturally.

Nora was dressed in her pink and girly outfit that was in no way indicative of the girl's fighting style or personality. No, for that one needed to look at the grenade launcher/warhammer she had strapped to the back of her hips. She was currently stomping in circles around Yang and poking the blonde's biceps and squinting like she wasn't convinced they were normal muscles. '_What a strange character.'_

Ren's subdued and quiet presence next to her was such a stark contrast, Weiss was once again baffled that the two were as inseparable as they were. His sleeveless, pale-green tailcoat left his own toned biceps on display. The strange, bladed pistols he used as weapons were holstered on cloth hooks on his coat. He stood smirking and shaking his head at Nora's antics, looking eerily similar to the way Blake was watching Yang with her own amused expression.

Weiss took this opportunity to look over Team KORL as well. Karn Ammolite, the leader, towered over everyone else present, easily six feet tall. He wore a navy blue jacket and black jeans that fit tightly to his bulky, muscled body, pieces of bronze armor protecting his shoulders, elbows, and calves. On his left arm was a pretty massive gauntlet that unfolded into a round shield much the way Jaune's turned into a kite shield, though _much_ bigger and thicker. Plus, it had the added feature of turning into a powerful arm cannon that blasted Dust rounds as large as Weiss' fist.

Orianna Phosphor looked incredible tiny next to him, a dainty girl as tall-or rather, as short-as Ruby. '_Though Ruby's almost as tall as me,' _Weiss thought begrudgingly, cringing at the memory of Ruby standing just under her height last night when she'd taking off her heels. Orianna had a slab of metal across her back criss-crossed with lines and gears that let it unfold into a twinsword, two long, thin blades on each side. It doubled as a longbow that shot hard-light arrows, and Weiss remembered that this had been the girl that had said her weapon had been inspired by Professor Rustheart's a couple days ago.

Remus Silver, yet another green-eyed redhead in the group of twelve, was barely any taller than Orianna. He wore green and silver clothing reminiscent of the Outer Vale style that Ren wore, and he had a single leather bracer on his left arm that sported the most striking part of his appearance-a pet falcon. The creature was remarkably well behaved (far more so than Yang and Nora, that was for sure) and seemed to be observing the students with a freakish intelligence and intensity. In his other hand, Remus held a long metal staff that Weiss knew folded up into a scoped rifle. Weiss wondered idly if his accuracy stacked up to Ruby's. There was a faint white scar on the side of his chin in the vague shape of a hexagon that gave him a bit more of an intimidating look than the boy would otherwise have.

Lastly there was Leona Nickols, a golden-brown haired girl that almost approached Karn in height. Her white and gold armor over red clothing and the massive greatsword/shotgun slung across her back made her look like a beautiful warrior goddess-like Pyrrha but far more physically imposing.

The way Karn and Leona towered over the other two made Team KORL look almost comically lopsided, though they probably looked pretty balanced when arranged in the order of their team name.

"It's not _my_ fault you're only the second strongest girl in the class, Nora," Yang's loud, mocking voice drew Weiss' inspecting gaze away.

"Oh?" came Leona's low voice as she joined the conversation. "I thought you were stronger than her, Yang."

Yang blinked in confusion as Nora squeaked out an offended "Hey!"

"I… am?" Yang said.

Leona nodded seriously. "Wouldn't that make Nora the _third_ strongest girl in our class?" She managed to keep the serious expression for only a moment longer before she broke out into a huge grin at her own punchline.

"Oh, you're on, beotch!" Yang yelled once the implication clicked in her head. She got into a low wrestler's stance and narrowed her eyes playfully at the goliath of a girl before her.

"Ooh, catfight," drawled an artificially deep voice behind them, drawing everyone's attention. Joy, Team CRDL was here. "Well don't stop," Cardin Winchester, Cretin Supreme, complained, looking Yang up and down with the creepy appraisal that Weiss associated with the men that so often preyed on her mother's broken heart at high society events. The same look that boys (and some perverted men) had started giving her, now that she'd grown.

It seemed Yang stole that spotlight here, though, something Weiss was more than happy not to have. She'd always abhorred attention that wasn't applause after a performance, and the appreciation of lusty man-children was most _certainly _on her list of things to avoid.

Besides, Yang-despite her faults-was very attractive. She had all the… accessories… that boys liked. Though Weiss was, for whatever reason, disturbed that Yang was getting those looks from this… insect. Cardin was the eldest son of the CEO of Winchester Arms and everything that Weiss and her siblings were raised _not_ to be in public. Rude, uncivil, disaffected by the negative image he portrayed of his family with his despicable behaviour.

And he was looking at Yang the same hungry way men looked at Weiss' mother before insisting on buying her a drink, fully aware she was a married woman.

It seemed like Yang shared Weiss' low opinion of the creep, though. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Charles," she sneered. "I'm surprised you made it to class. I would have thought you'd be busy kicking a puppy or failing to figure out how to unlock your bathroom door."

The punk scowled at her, and when Weiss snorted he turned and shot the same look at her. He slowly turned back to Yang slowly. "It's Cardin."

"What is?" Yang asked in mocking innocence.

Everyone in the room starting grinning in amusement in various degrees save for the members of Team CRDL and a much more genuinely innocent and confused Ruby.

"It's his name, Yang," she explained quietly, leaning forward nervously like she was trying not to embarrass her sister.

Yang cocked an eyebrow and smirked at Ruby. "Oh. Sure, my bad."

Though it seemed everyone but Ruby seemed to share the same low opinion of Cardin and, by extension, Team CRDL, the friendly, chatty air in the room had been sucked out with a vacuum.

'_Interesting,' _Weiss thought to herself. '_I just generalized all of Team CRDL based solely on my opinion of its leader… Will people make assumptions about me based on Ruby?'_

That was a sobering and worrying question. People might think she's a goofy, daft child that eats far too many sweets and has no clue how the world works.

… But they might also think that she was happy and kind, with a smile ready for everyone, even scum like Cardin. That wouldn't be _terrible_ to have as part of her reputation, even if it was nothing close to the truth.

The uncomfortable silence stretched longer and longer, the various teams all turning to themselves and looking at each other awkwardly. Ruby was still just confused, looking around with wide eyes.

"But I wanted to see who'd win the wrestling match," she pouted, drawing everyone's eyes and more than a few smiles.

With a playfully dismissive scoff, Yang wrapped her arm around her sister. "It would be me, Ruby-Roo. No contest."

Leona raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, her metal armguards letting out a high pitched squeal as they rubbed together. "Money match me, blondie."

"Heh… uh... " Yang scratched her head nervously much the same way Ruby did.

'_Is she actually nervous?'_ Weiss wondered, surprised at the hothead's sudden bashfulness.

"Sure. H-how much?" Yang stammered.

'_Oh.'_

Yang wasn't nervous about the fight-she probably wasn't one to back down from _any_ fight. No, she was nervous about the money. Something about that made Weiss' hurt twist around; she thought wrestling and betting was childish and immature, but the fact that Yang couldn't be _herself_ because of money troubles made Weiss feel… strangely guilty.

That didn't make sense. It wasn't _her_ fault she was born into a wealthy family and others weren't. It just was what it was. And she felt like she'd done a lot with her position of privilege-she was certainly a better influence on the world than jerks like Cardin-and she probably did more with the education and resources that had been given to her that someone like Yang or Ruby would have. Maybe Blake would have used it well.

Leona's voice pulled her out of her musings. "A hundred lien!" she grinned, prompting a cringe from Yang.

"Oh, no thanks," she said nervously, turning away and looking around at the others like she was trying to find someone to change the subject with.

Leona seemed to realize that there was an issue here, her eyes widening as she waved her arms to try to backtrack. "O-or not! We don't have to b-"

"It's okay!" Weiss interrupted her. She stepped forward and flashed Yang a smile. "I'll sponsor you. Hundred lien on Yang."

Yang seemed as suspicious of Weiss' declaration as she herself was confused by it. It had been a spur of the moment decision, which she really wasn't used to making. But she was fairly certain Yang would win, and even if she didn't a hundred lien was nothing to Weiss. And maybe… maybe Yang would appreciate the vote of confidence?

"Ooh! Ooh! Can I bet on Yang too?" Ruby bounced up and down.

Leona huffed and crossed her arms again, clearly annoyed so many people thought she'd lose the fight.

Yang looked down at Ruby with a frown. "Rubes, you don't have any money to bet."

"No, but I have cookies!"

When Nora burst out laughing, pretty much everyone joined her. Ruby looked around with a surprised, wide smile, seemingly pleased that she'd sparked so many smiles and laughs.

"Oh shit, you're all here," an adult male voice sounded from the glass doors.

It was Professor Nidas in the doorway, black jeans and a red dress shirt covered by a long, grey, sleeveless coat. He had unruly deep purple hair, so dark it was almost black, and blue eyes that were several shades darker than Weiss'. He had a healthy tan like he spent a lot of time in the sun, and a stubble beard that did a lot to cover up some acne scarring on his cheeks.

Ruby and Yang both stood up on their toes, wide-eyed as they looked over their favorite celebrity huntsman. Orianna was almost swooning, and even Pyrrha seemed to straighten her back and try refine her already perfect posture.

"Soooo… Greetings, students," Professor Rustheart said with a goofy half wave of one arm. "I'm Professor Nidas-er, Professor Rustheart, I guess?"

'_Oh no,' _Weiss lamented. '_He has no idea what he's doing.'_

Professor Rustheart looked around at all the students arranged in front of him, his eyes narrowing as they passed over the excited faces of Ruby and Yang and Orianna. He took a breath and seemed to find some sort of center.

"Alright, before we start, I want to get something out of the way. Don't ask me about Molvane. It's not relevant to this class and not something I like to talk about."

Yang slowly shrank down, her enthusiasm leaking out of her, though Ruby didn't seem too bothered, continuing to hop up and down with a smile. The professor raised an eyebrow at her before turning away with a funny look.

"So. First things first, I want to talk about what this class is going to be. Can anybody hazard a guess? Yes, you, with the red and overabundance of energy."

Ruby pulled her down as fast as she'd shot it up and chirped, "A super awesome combat class where you teach us how to fight Grimm like super awesome heroes?"

Sighing, Weiss hid her face in her hands while Yang snorted and put an arm around Ruby, subtly pushing down on her shoulder to get her to stop bouncing. It didn't help all that much-Ruby's jumps just became shorter but more frequent.

Professor Rustheart was baffled and amused at Ruby's response, his eyebrows shooting up while his lips twitched in a clear struggle to not laugh. "Yes, well… how, uh, 'super awesome' you are will be up to you. I and the rest of the faculty will do our best to get you there." He started pacing back and forth, his shadow cast from the light streaming in through the glass doors falling across the front few students, Team CRDL and a couple members of Team JNPR. "And you are correct. We will be teaching you how to fight Grimm. We'll shape you into the defenders of the kingdoms-" he glanced at Ruby "-the _heroes_ you're all here to be."

Ruby beamed brightly at the recognition and somehow grew even more excited as the Professor spoke.

"However," Rustheart continued, adding a dramatic pause, "that is not the only thing we're going to be training you to fight."

"W-what else is there?" the tiny voice of Orianna asked from behind Leona.

Professor Rustheart gave the class a sad smile. "Other huntsmen."

"... What?"

All eyes briefly turned to Ruby at her outburst of confusion before turning back to the professor.

He had stopped pacing. "The world is changing, kiddos. More and more the biggest threat to the people of Remnant isn't Grimm, but… other people." He paused to look around the room, taking in the shocked faces of the children. "People like bandits-" he glanced down at his feet "-criminals-" he glanced at someone in Team KORL, Weiss couldn't tell who "-terrorists-" he glanced… at them? Yang, or Blake?

He must just be looking at random people while talking. That was one of the important things to remember when public speaking, to make eye contact with members of your audience.

"And as weapons development, Dust, and an understanding of fighting techniques, semblance, and Aura have become more widely available, these en… these _violent _people managed to get their own huntsmen among them." He began pacing again. "So Professor Ozpin decided it would be wise to update your curriculum so that you're prepared to defend yourself if you ever come across any of these… anti-huntsmen."

"So…" Pyrrha spoke up, thinking through her words, "it's kind of like a class for learning how to fight in the Vytal Tournament?" Her voice hitched up at the end, making the question sound hopeful.

Weiss understood her trepidation. It was… scary to think that they were going to train on how to fight other people. That's not what a huntress does, right? At least… it _wasn't_.

"Yes!" Professor Rustheart exclaimed, eager to latch on to the more 'acceptable' explanation. "Yes, that's a good way to look at it."

Most of the kids seemed to relax, though Weiss was unconvinced. '_As are a couple others,' _she realized as she took note of Karn, Jaune, and Yang's dubious expressions.

"Anyway," the professor continued, waving his hands to dispel the weird energy in the room, "don't worry about that now. Most of this class in the first semester is just going to be focusing on helping you guys find team synergies and tactics anyway.

"As I'm sure you're all aware, pretty much every huntsman and huntress has a unique fighting style and set of abilities with their semblance and Dust affinities, so we won't be focusing too hard on training your individual techniques. You guys all seem to have a pretty good grasp of how you want to approach fights, so we'll just be making sure you get a lot of practice in a variety of different scenarios and helping you learn to improvise, because fights in the field rarely go as cleanly as those in training." He met the eyes of the four team leaders. "That goes double for you team leaders."

He clapped his hands, startling a couple of the students. "But today we're going to establish foundations. How many of you have taken an elemental affinity test before?"

Most hands in the room went up, only Ruby, Blake, and Remus left looking around nervously.

"They didn't make you take one at Signal?" Weiss asked her partner incredulously. That was one of the basics!

Yang peeked at Weiss over Ruby's head as the smaller girl stammered. "We did it in third year over there. But Ruby skipped that 'cause she's awesome!" She gave her sister an encouraging one-armed hug, prompting the girl to give a shy but grateful smile.

"Okay, good," the professor said. "How many of you took one within the past year?"

Every hand dropped, save Pyrrha's.

The professor turned to the warrior girl. "They make you take one before every tourney?" he guessed.

Pyrrha nodded.

"'Kay. You can sit out if you'd like, as the numbers probably haven't changed too much for you, though if you do I'd still like you to share your scores with your team."

"It's okay," Pyrrha said, shaking her head lightly. "I don't mind taking it again."

Weiss raised an eyebrow at that. Affinity tests were… unpleasant. There were probably other words one could use to describe voluntarily getting shot repeatedly with a variety of Dust rounds, but Weiss settled on 'unpleasant'.

"I don't wanna take a test," Ruby grumbled, mostly to herself.

"Don't worry, sis," Yang said, giving the girl an affectionate scratch on the head. "It's not _that_ kind of test."

"Oh." Ruby was clearly confused.

"So! This is gonna be strange, but I'm gonna have most of you guys leave. We'll do the tests one team at a time, and I'll message the team leaders when it's your team's turn. That's why I blocked out twelve to six this week. So… which team would like to go first?"

Everybody looked around at each other questioningly. Slowly, Ruby raised her hand.

"Alright! Team Rawoobie goes first!"

That got a chuckle out of everyone but the four of them, who either glared at the professor or, in Ruby's case, pouted.

"After that we'll do Team, uh, Curdle-"

"_Cardinal_," Cardin almost snarled, interrupting the professor.

Professor Rustheart simply lifted a bemused eyebrow at the man-child before continuing on. "Then I'll call Team, uh… Junper? And then… Team… Coral? Corral?... Carl?" He shrugged. "Not much I can do with those two."

"He's my favorite teacher _ever_," Yang whispered to her team.

'_Great, all we need is Yang getting into a bad joke-off with the professor.'_

"Well, everyone but Team Rawoobie can clear out. Or hang out here. Dunno. Don't care. Just be ready to head over here when I message you. The tests will take about an hour and a half per team, so plan accordingly."

The teams all started shuffling out the doors, some members of Team JNPR and KORL giving Team RWBY waves and "see ya later!"s.

"Shall we head to the range?" Professor Rustheart asked, already moving towards the door on the right that Weiss had peeked through earlier.

The four of them followed behind. Ruby turned to whisper to her sister, "Range?"

"Yeah!" Yang cheerily answered. "We're gonna shoot each other!"

"... What?"

Weiss turned and grinned at her partner. "This time friendly fire's on!" She flashed her eyes wide at the last word for effect, and Ruby let out a little "Eep!"

Yang snorted and gave Weiss a big grin at the joke. "Don't worry, Rubes. Nothing terrible. We just get shot with low-yield Dust rounds and measure how much damage each of the elements do to see what our resistances are to each."

"It also also tells you which types of Dust you have more control over for casting," Weiss expounded.

Blake tilted her head to the side to look at Weiss. "Oh, does it?"

Weiss nodded. "The higher resistance you have to a type of Dust, the more control you have over it when casting."

Professor Rustheart opened the door to the indoor range for them and nodded. "It's not an exact science," he said. "If you have more experience and familiarity with a certain type of Dust, that will more than likely supercede the resistance factor. But theoretically, if you had an equal amount of experience with all the types of Dust, you'd be most proficient casting the Dust types you're most resistant to."

"Neat!" chirped Ruby, hoping into one of the cubicle spaces where a few small pistols were lying on the desk surrounded by a bunch of magazines and Dust rounds.

"It'll also give us an Aura index for you gals," the professor finished, approaching the weapons and patting Ruby on the back. "Now, would any of you like to shoot each other?"

Stepping forward, Weiss grinned wickedly. "I'd _love_ to shoot Ruby, if that's okay."

"No please," squeaked Ruby.

The professor smirked, but bobbed his head side to side in thought. "Maybe someone that's already taken an affinity test should go first?"

"But all she has to do is stand still and let me shoot her!" Weiss protested. It really wasn't complicated.

Professor Rustheart snorted. "Got some frustrations to let out?"

"No, I just owe her some friendly fire," Weiss responded, eyeing Ruby and trying to suppress a smile.

The weird mixture of worry and laughter on Ruby's face was adorable. "Can't we just have peace, Weissy-Weiss? I surrender!"

Weiss narrowed her eyes at the nickname. "Oh, I am _so _shooting you."

Ruby giggled, then her amusement slowly died down as she considered that sentence. She gulped.

"It's okay, Rubes," Yang said, hopping over the half door that led out to the range. "I'll go first. Blake, wanna shoot me?"

Blake smirked lightly. "Strangely, yes, yes I do."

There was a wistful smile on Professor Rustheart's face, and Weiss wondered what memories he was visiting right now. He stepped to the side to let Blake take the center of the shooting cubicle, then started handing out earmuffs to everyone.

"Yang, isn't it?" he asked the blonde as she trudged out to the line in the grass that Weiss presumed was the ten foot mark. Yang nodded. "Can you sync your myAura to me so I can note the measurements."

"Sure, what's your scroll ID?" she answered, pulling out her own scroll and flicking it open.

"Uh… Rusty boy double-oh seven," he said, pursing his lips together to stop an embarrassed grin.

"Is that 'boy' with a Y or an I?" Yang asked with a giant grin.

"... I…"

A snicker erupted out of Yang, to which Rustheart responded with a glare and a grumbled "shudup".

There was a 'ding!' as their scrolls synced and the professor burst out laughing. "Really? _You're _laughing at _my_ scroll ID, Miss Dragon Fist Nine Thousand XXX?"

Yang's cheeks went a shade of red that would have put her angry eyes to shame. "I was, like, eight when I made that, okay?"

Between fits of brief laughter, Rustheart waved it away. "Alright-hehe-alright, alright. I'm synced up. We can go ahead and start. Blake, if you could load that gun on the right with the gray-taped magazine, please."

Following the instructions, Blake deftly picked up the gun, popped in the magazine, and flipped the slide before leveling it calmly at Yang with a smirk.

Yang, for her part, didn't look nervous at all. She stood with her weight shifted to one hip, her hand on it and a teasing smile on her face. "Should I be concerned that you're so happy to shoot me, Babe-adonna?"

Blake cringed exaggeratedly. "These are just _bad_, hun."

Yang didn't seem discouraged, just shrugging nonchalantly. "We've got at _least_ four years for me to find something that meets your ridiculous standards. Plenty of time."

That made Weiss pause. At _least_ four years? So… there could be more? She hadn't considered continuing as a team after graduation. Although… just four years of Ruby and Yang already seemed daunting and exhausting. Would she be able to handle more after that? Unlikely.

"Alright, earmuffs on, then go ahead and shoot 'er, Blake. Just aim for the chest."

"It would be hard to miss," Blake muttered with a smirk as she donned the protective headwear. Yang gave her an incredibly pleased grin and batted her eyelashes playfully.

What the Crucible was going on between these two?

Ruby didn't seem to be registering any of the deranged interaction, her eyes wide with worry as she looked between her sister and the gun in Blake's hands.

Weiss clamped her earmuffs on, then walked over to Ruby and pulled the girl's earmuffs gently out of her hands and slid them on her head. Ruby turned to look at her, blinking in surprise, before giving her a small, grateful smile. Weiss took the opportunity to tuck some of her partner's wayward bangs behind her ear and pin them back with the earmuff. At least that would hold-

**BANG!**

Both Weiss and Ruby jumped at the noise and turned to see Yang flash yellow and lean backwards almost imperceptibly, smoke trailing out of the barrel of Blake's gun. Weiss slowly pulled off her ear protection. Looking down at herself, Yang used two fingers like tweezers and-yep, she reached down into her cleavage and withdrew her hand, revealing a flattened bullet. She looked at it in bewilderment for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"That's a new one," she chuckled. "Nice shot, Beebee. I believe in windball that's called a ringer."

Blake blushed and smiled _way_ too proudly. "I aim to please."

"I bet." Yagled

"Ladies, please!" Professor Rustheart interrupted them. "There is a _child_ present." He gestured at Ruby, who, earmuffs still on, blinked at everyone in confusion.

"WHAT?" she shouted.

With a sigh, Weiss yanked the girl's earmuffs down to sit around her neck, completely ruining Ruby's hair in the process-not that it was in all that great a state to begin with. "Dolt," she grumbled.

The professor dragged them back on task with a low whistle. "Damn, Yang. How much Aura you got?"

"Lots!" she replied with a smile that contained all the bravado in Remnant. "Why, how much did it do?"

"Only four-point-four percent," Rustheart answered as he penciled in the number. "The average for first years is usually between six and seven."

'_Four-point-four?' _That was… impressive. When Weiss last took the test two years ago, the standard bullet had done six percent flat.

"Yeah, well, you know," Yang bragged coyly. "I'm awesome and stuff."

"Blake, could you shoot her a couple more times for me, please," Rustheart said.

Blake smirked. "With pleasure."

"_I'm bulletproooof! Nothing to lose. Fire away, fire away,_" Yang sang, spinning in a circle without a care in the world that there was a firearm pointed at her.

Weiss and Ruby put their earmuffs back on right before two more shots rang out. Sure enough, four-point-four and four-point-five percent damage to her Aura. Yang was… strong.

"How much do these rounds do to you, Professor?" Weiss asked as they took off their earmuffs again. It would be nice to have something to compare to for how far they had to go.

"Hm? Oh, these little twenty-twos? About one-point-one percent." All of the girls' eyes wide. "Keep in mind, though, I have _quite_ a bit of Aura, even for a professional huntsman."

Weiss nodded at that. Still, that was… insane. _Yang's_ Aura level was already insane, almost on par with the average professional, adult huntsman, and Professor Rustheart had apparently four times as much.

"Alright, we've got our reference point. We'll use four-point-four-three as the baseline. We can calculate your Aura index after we're done here, Yang. Or, actually…" the professor stroked his stubbled chin in thought. "Maybe I can have you calculate it after class! As homework!"

"Awwww," Ruby whined.

"Come on, Teach!" Yang griped. "You're supposed to be the _cool_ professor!"

Rustheart's frown looked suspiciously like a pout. "But… but I've always _wanted _to assign homework!" he protested weakly.

Weiss couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of this conversation. The face the man-the _grown _man and professional, licensed Grimm slayer-was making looked like the expression she imagined Ruby would make if someone told her she couldn't eat a cookie.

"Whatever!" the 'professor' huffed with a wave of his hands. "We'll figure that crap out later. Let's shoot this mongoloid some more! Any preference for the first Dust type?" He directed the question at Yang.

"I've got some hella good fire resistance, if you want to start there."

Professor Rustheart nodded. "Okay, Blake. Go ahead and load the that red taped magazine into this second gun. Just one shot this time. Don't want to knock all the Aura out of her."

"Why do we need to use a different gun?" she asked as she did as directed.

"Different Dust rounds usually need to be in different calibers 'cause reasons that Glynda-er, Professor Goodwitch-could explain to you better than I can. Luckily, they all work as twenty-twos, but fire and lightning rounds need to have a special alloy for the chamber or the barrel might rupture. And we want to leave the gun for the regular rounds to remain Dust round free so it can't have any risk of residual Dust screwing with the baseline measurements."

Blake nodded absently as she leveled the gun and once again at Yang's voluptuous chest.

"Ready?" she asked Yang, who nodded. A gunshot rang through the air and Yang's yellow Aura flickered as a spark of red hit her in the collarbone, a small flame erupting before quickly dying.

The professor was already writing down the readings. "Five-point-oh-nine, 'kay. Minus this guyyy… divided by the same guy… minus one… move the decimal, and bam! Damn, Yang. Eighty-five-point-one percent resistant to fire. That's impressive."

"Yeah I am!" she quipped.

Blake looked up at the professor beside her. "What's the highest you've seen before?"

Professor Rustheart scratched the stubble on his jaw. "Hmmm… The highest resistance I've seen that wasn't related to a semblance ability was eighty-six percent against wind Dust from some kid that was in the year below me."

"What about semblance related ones?" Weiss asked, mostly because now she needed to know.

"Oh, one of my teammates had an almost straight up pyrokinetic semblance, so he was a hundred percent immune to fire." When Yang let out a grumpy grunt at being surpassed, Rustheart shrugged. "Some semblances do that. Like, I'd hazard to guess Nora's got a one hundred percent resistance to lightning damage.

"Anyway, you get the idea of what we're doing here, Ruby?"

Ruby shifted her weight back and forth nervously. "Y-yeah. I guess. We're just, like, shooting each other and then doing math, right?"

Blake and Yang burst out laughing at that simplification while Weiss buried her face in her hands once again and the professor did his best not to laugh himself.

"Y-yeah. Pretty much," he said, choking back his amusement. He turned to Weiss. "I'm guessing you know how to do the calculations here, Weiss?"

Weiss straightened up her back and smiled proudly. Apparently her reputation preceded her. "I do." They were pretty simple calculations. You just needed to get the damage dealt by the Dust by subtracting the damage dealt by the bullet and then convert it to a percentage.

"Good, good. You two wanna hop over there and get started yourselves? I'll bounce between you guys nad make sure everything's going well."

"Of course," Weiss said as she headed over to the next stall where another setup of guns and ammo was ready for them.

"By the way, Weiss," Professor Rustheart called after her.

"Yes, sir?"

"You're, a _Schnee_ Schnee, right?"

Weiss blinked. "I'm sorry?"

Professor Rustheart cringed as he seemed to realize how nonsensical his question sounded. "You're part of the main family, right? Not, like, a cousin or something?"

'_Oh no.'_ It wasn't just her reputation that was preceding her, it was her father's. She'd dealt with this all her life, but she had hoped it wouldn't happen here, like this, with the "cool professor" of all people.

"No, I'm the heiress of Schnee Dust."

"So are you Winter's little sister?"

'_Oh.' _

"I am. You know Winter?"

"I do!" He seemed genuinely happy at that thought. "We've worked together a few times while on missions for Ozpin and Jimmy-uh, General Ironwood. She's pretty awesome. First person to knock me on my ass in a _long_ time."

Weiss nodded, grinning slightly with pride at that admission. At least people making assumptions about her from her sister's reputation was better than them doing so from her father's. If anything, Professor Rustheart would regard her _more_ highly now.

He's also probably have higher expectations of her.

Then again, she had high expectations of herself already. Though she was already failing to meet those…

"I'm surprised you ran missions with the Atlesian military. Is that… _normal_ for professional huntsmen?"

"No, not really," Rustheart said. "They were, uh, special missions, let's say. And Winter lost her team and I lost half of mine and Butters retired after he lost his arm, so it seemed sensible to have me and a couple other super-huntsmen tag along with her on some of the more dangerous assignments."

"Wait, what?" Weiss blurted, stunned.

Blake whispered quietly, "I'm sorry for your loss." Weiss barely registered that Blake was consoling their professor.

"What do you mean 'Winter lost her team?'" Did they die? That doesn't make any sense. Weiss would know if they had. Winter would have told her!

"Oh…" Rustheart's face twisted into a deep frown. "Uh… well…"

"What happened to them?" Weiss demanded.

Rustheart looked around for a distraction. "Hey, look, Ruby's waiting for you to shoot her! Look at that, haha!"

"_What happened to them?_... sir." A cold rage was building up inside Weiss, and she wanted to hit something, preferably the man that was keeping something this important from her.

"They, uh, fell in battle during a mission a few years ago. I don't know too many details."

….

….

….

"Weiss?" Ruby's voice broke her out of her mental blank, the girl placing a small hand on her arm in support. "You… you okay?"

Weiss blinked and looked around. Her teammates were all staring at her wide-eyed with different expressions of worry and concern, and Rustheart was guiltily shuffling his feet and refusing to meet her gaze.

"Y-yeah. I'm fine, sorry."

Weiss shoved the disheartening news from her mind. It was best not to dwell on how her elder sister seemed to not trust her enough to share the fact that her team-people Winter had referred to as _family_-had all been killed. And she hadn't said anything for _years._ Would she ever?

'_No, don't think about it, Weiss. Now's not the time.'_

She walked over to the cubicle with her and Ruby's setup for the affinity test. "Go stand on the line, Ruby. And sync up your myAura with me."

She loaded the standard firearm meant for establishing the Aura baseline. A few seconds passed and Ruby hadn't come out to stand on the line. Weiss turned around to find her partner still standing in the same spot, still staring at her with those giant, worried silver eyes.

"Ruby, I'm fine. Come on, let's get started."

Ruby walked through the gate to the range but came to stand in front of Weiss on the other side of the desk.

"You sure you're okay?" she asked.

"_Yes_," Weiss hissed, immediately regretting her tone as Ruby flinched back. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I-just… I'm fine. Please just leave it alone."

Ruby watched her face for a long moment before nodding slowly and backing away to the line.

"Alright," Weiss called out, doing her best to inject some fake cheer in her voice to try to get Ruby to stop looking at her like she was something fragile and dangerously close to breaking, "open up myAura and then sync with me so I can see your Aura levels."

Flipping out her scroll, Ruby seemed to acquiesce to the change in conversation. "You know, Weiss, your scroll ID is _super_ boring. Weiss underscore Schnee? Come on, at least make it, like, Princess Snowflake or Heiress Supreme or something!"

Grateful that Ruby was willing to let the matter slide, Weiss rolled her eyes. "Right, because _that_ would be professional and appropriate for a public figure."

"Yeah!"

"And I suppose Red Reaper nine thousand is also professional and something you want everybody with any connection to you to see?"

"Yep! That's my gamertag!"

Weiss closed her eyes for a brief moment, stopping herself from retorting that it being her gamertag was pretty much guaranteeing it wasn't professional. "Well, I'm set," she said instead. "Ready to get shot?"

Ruby balked and dug a toe into the ground anxiously. "Uh, sure. Just, uh, be nice? Don't hurt my face?"

Weiss' eyes went wide. "I would never!"

Ruby didn't seem convinced.

"I'm just gonna shoot you in the chest, don't worry."

The brunette looked down at herself. "I don't have as much armor there as Yang does, though."

Weiss snorted at that, and Yang laughed from where she stood a few feet to Ruby's left.

"That's not how Aura works, Ruby," Weiss chastised her partner gently.

Ruby shrugged. "Still…"

Rolling her eyes, Weiss pulled her earmuffs on. "Just stand still you dolt."

She raised the gun at the little nitwit and a stark uncomfortableness washed over her. It felt… _wrong_ to be aiming a weapon at Ruby. Weiss shook the feeling off and squeezed the trigger just as Ruby squeezed her eyes shut and balled up her fists at her side, tensing for the hit.

**BANG!**

The noise reverberated off the walls of the firing station, making Weiss send a mental 'thank you' to whoever invented the sound dampening earmuffs. A small circle in the center of Ruby's chest flashed red when the bullet crashed into her, webs of energy crawling out around her shoulders and ribs in the aftermath.

Yeah, it definitely felt wrong.

"Ow!" Ruby yelped.

"Oh please, Rubes," Yang said next to her. "That didn't hurt."

"Yeah it did!"

Yang put a hand on her hip. "Don't be a ba-Ack!"

She got cut off as Blake popped her with a lightning round, the yellow arcs of electricity spiking off one of her absurdly large boobs with a 'zzzzip!' noise.

Blake giggled at the reaction.

Rolling her eyes at her ridiculous teammates, Weiss checked her scroll to see how much damage Ruby had taken from the shot.

Six-point-two. Not bad. Ruby had only a little less Aura than Weiss did at her age. And it was on the better side of average for first year students according to Professor Rustheart. It _did _make Yang's four-point-four look even more ridiculous be comparison, though.

"Two more, Ruby," she called out. "You ready?"

Her partner gave her another of those adorable pouts. "If I say no, will it matter?"

"No."

"Hnnnghhh," she groaned.

Weiss rolled her eyes again, this time to stop herself from smiling. "How 'bout this? If you can make through the rest of this test without whining, we'll play your silly videogame for an extra hour tonight."

Ruby lit up. "Deal!"

'_She is tragically easy to handle,'_ Weiss sighed to herself.

"Alright. Here goes."

Two shots later they had their baseline. An average of six-point-two-five.

"Which Dust type you want to do first?" Weiss asked, inspecting the magazines arrayed in front of her.

Ruby rubbed at the center of her rib cage with a frown. "Um… Let's go in rainbow order! Roy G. Biv!"

That seemed like a sensible, preconstructed order. Weiss was actually quite pleased with that idea, and decided she'd follow it herself on her turn.

She loaded up the fire rounds in the special pistol. "Say 'cheese'!" she said with a grin before shooting Ruby again. A ball of fire erupted on the girl's collarbone. She let out a soft "Eep!" as the flames flickered into her face and patted herself out.

Weiss did the math. Twenty-two percent fire resistance. Ruby was clearly very different from her sister.

It took about thirty minutes to get through the whole test for Ruby, shooting her with every Dust round save hardlight and white. According to Professor Rustheart, hardlight Dust did the same damage to everybody's Aura, and white Dust didn't do any at all. That last part, more than anything, was proof that Aura was a force of light.

They almost weren't able to finish the test. Ruby was left at less than eight percent of her Aura left after the last shot, a gravity round. As it turned out, though, gravity happened to be Ruby's highest resistance, almost on par with Yang's fire resistance.

Ruby walked over to the desk to look at her scores, hugging herself and rubbing at her arms like they were sore. She'd be feeling weak, Weiss knew, missing as much Aura as she was at the moment.

The tiredness in Ruby's eyes disappeared immediately as she took a look at the sheet Weiss had in front of her, though.

"Whoa! It's like I have character stats!" she chirped happily.

Weiss rolled her eyes. Now Ruby was going to go around acting like she was a video game character.

"You _do_ have stats, Ruby. We all do. That's the whole point of this test-to find them."

Ruby bounced up and down as Professor Rustheart walked over, and Weiss did her best not to glare at the man. It wasn't _his_ fault Winter had lost her team and not said anything about it for _years_.

He ran his fingers over the numbers in Weiss' tight, neat handwriting. "Looks good. Dang, Ruby. You've got some really high percentages." Ruby beamed at the compliment. "And look at that," Rustheart continued. "Your highest is gravity too. I've noticed that's a trend with team leaders. High gravity or earth resistance."

"Really?" Weiss asked. "I was taught affinity _wasn't_ related to personality."

The professor shrugged. "There's a lot of debate about it. I personally think it is, mostly because I've seen too many people with affinities that seem to equate to their character."

What did it mean about Ruby that her best affinity was gravity? Did it mean she had a personality that pulled people in? Or that she viewed herself as the center of the world?

The first made sense to Weiss, while the latter didn't. Ruby definitely seemed to have an "attractive" personality-people liked being around her, Weiss included, despite her harsh initial judgement of the girl. But Ruby certainly didn't seem arrogant or self-centered. In fact, she was quite the opposite.

"Wow, my fire resistance sucks," Ruby said, looking down at the sheet. "It's a miracle I get along with Yang!"

"Your face sucks!" Yang called from out of sight.

"Actually, twenty-two percent is a pretty average resistance," Professor Rustheart said. "Like I said, you've got some crazy high percentages."

"Oh. Neat!"

Weiss looked down at the numbers in front of her.

Regular - 6.205, 6.295, 6.250 (6.250) | Aura Index: 1600

Fire - 11.125 | 4.875 | 22%

Molten - 9.688 | 3.438 | 45%

Lightning - 8.625 | 2.375 | 62%

Air - 8.000 | 1.750 | 72%

Earth - 8.125 | 1.875 | 70%

Ice - 10.000 | 3.75 | 40%

Water - 10.438 | 4.188 | 33%

Gravity - 7.625 | 1.375 | 78%

They _were_ really high. The highest resistance Weiss had two years ago was ice at sixty percent…

"Alright, Weiss! Your turn!" Ruby grinned mischievously at her. "Now it is I that shall friendly fire you!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at Ruby's goofy phrasing. It must have been a reference to something. "Do you know how to do the calculations?" she asked.

Ruby's face fell. "Ah. Uh… no." She turned to the professor. "Can you help me with that?"

"Of course!" he said, patting her on the back. "That's what I'm here for."

Relaxing at the reassurance, Ruby picked up the standard gun and waved it at Weiss. "Go line up!"

Weiss and Professor Rustheart both shot their hands out to lower the gun, Rustheart snorting in amusement as Weiss huffed "Put that down!" to her partner.

"Oh. Sorry." Ruby grinned sheepishly.

Weiss rolled her eyes and headed out to the line, waiting patiently as Ruby aimed at her.

Yeah, it had felt weird to point a gun at Ruby, but it felt even weirder to stand there and wait to get shot.

Ruby seemed to be as weirded out as Weiss had been. "This feels wrong," she muttered, frowning.

Yang didn't seem to have any such misgivings about shooting her partner. Blake had just lined up next to Weiss and turned around when Yang put three bullets into her with a loud cackle.

Thank Dust Blake had already been projecting her Aura. It was probably second nature to them all by now, something natural and constant like breathing or blinking, but still. Weiss couldn't help the brief flash of worry that had gone through her when the gunshots rang out.

"Alright, Ruby," Weiss called out, taking a deep breath to steel her nerves. "Let's get this over with."

Affinity tests _suck._

It took a little longer for them to get through Weiss and Blake's readings because the professor had to keep bouncing back and forth to help the two dolt sisters with the measurements and math.

"Isn't it so cool we have the same fire resistance?" Ruby chirped, tugging on Weiss' sleeve in unrestrained happiness as they both looked over her numbers.

Regular - 5.018, 5.112, 5.109 (5.080) | Aura Index: 1969

Fire - 9.042 | 3.962 | 22%

Molten - 9.347 | 4.267 | 16%

Lightning - 8.738 | 3.658 | 28%

Air - 7.925 | 2.845 | 44%

Earth - 9.754 | 4.674 | 8%

Ice - 6.807 | 1.727 | 66%

Water - 7.417 | 2.337 | 54%

Gravity - 9.449 | 4.369 | 14%

Weiss responded with a half-hearted smile. That was a neat coincidence, but a nothing more. But the vast disparity in Weiss and Ruby's resistances? _That_ was disappointing. The only advantage Weiss had was that she had a bit more Aura, but Ruby would quickly catch up with age and experience. And…

"What does it mean that earth is my weakest element?" she asked, turning to the professor.

He cocked his head to the side and studied her. "What do _you_ think it means?"

That made Weiss pause. Did it mean she wasn't… solid? Grounded? No, that was ridiculous. She knew exactly who she was and what she wanted.

"There's no way affinity has anything to do with personality," she concluded with finality.

The professor shrugged a shoulder. "You may be right," he returned simply.

Ruby was still excitedly looking at their numbers, trying to find silly connections between them.

"This is so weird! Look, my molten resistance is higher than my fire, but yours is lower! But both of our water resistances are lower than our ice! It's so random!"

Yang walked over, a paper in each hand and a tired Blake behind her.

"What was your best, Rubes?"

"Gravity! Seventy-eight percent!" Ruby put her hands on her hips and struck a goofy superhero pose.

"Was Weiss' ice?"

"Yep!"

"Ha! Ice Queen." Yang gave Weiss a playful nudge that she answered with a glare.

"What was Blake's best?" Ruby asked, trying to peek over the edge of the paper Yang was holding rather than actually waiting for an answer.

"Water," her sister replied. "Sixty-four percent."

"Water to your fire," Weiss mused. "Is that good or bad?"

Yang grinned widely. "It's great! 'Cause together we get steamy!" She wiggled her eyebrows at Blake, who rolled her eyes and did her best to hide a blush.

Professor Rustheart cleared his throat before Weiss could inform Yang that she was, in fact, an idiot.

"So, that's that," he said. "You ladies are good to go. I'll see you on Friday, twelve o'clock, out in the lobby."

Ruby hopped up and down. "What will we be doing?"

"I'll have you do some one v ones with each other, get a sense of how you fight and how you move. Next week we'll be doing tournament style one v ones against another team on Wednesday so you can test yourselves against non-teammates, and then we'll probably do two v twos on Friday."

Blake tilted her head quizzically. "When will we start fighting as a team?"

Professor Rustheart seesawed his hand back and forth. "Fighting with three other people can get a little hectic. I want to build up to that, let you guys get comfortable fighting with your partners before we go into full team battles."

Weiss glanced at Ruby, who was already shooting her one of her massive, shining smiles. She couldn't help but return it. That smile was contagious.

"Sweet!" Ruby cheered.

"Now get going, you guys," the professor said, holding the door open for them. "I gotta call the next team in. Who did I say was next?"

"Team Curdle," Weiss answered, grinning at the name.

"That's totally going to stick," Yang chuckled as she walked out.

They all headed out, giving a goodbye wave to the professor before exiting the building and heading back toward their dorm. Almost the entire walk consisted of Ruby excitedly yapping about potential team combos and what they should call them, spouting nonsense like "Freezerburn" and "Ladybug" and "Iceflower". The names seemed to have more to do with the colors of the hair and clothes of the girls in the maneuver than it did with what they were actually hypothetically doing.

"What about, like, me and Blake going all ninja on someone and we call it Hidden Babe Technique?" Yang suggested.

She was definitely feeling less mentally strained than the rest of them-but of course she was, she still had close to a third of her Aura left. Weiss was trudging along with a measly sixteen percent. And she had absolutely _no_ idea how Ruby had enough energy to walk, much less skip by her side and jabber on about "wombo combos" they should use on the next Death Stalker they fight.

"Can you even ninja, though?" Blake asked her partner with a teasing grin.

Yang scoffed. "Well sure! You just have to go, like, 'hwaaah!' before every hit and bow to your opponents!"

"What about, you know, being _sneaky_?" Blake asked, looking slightly offended.

"What's that?" Yang replied, straight-faced.

"You're an oaf," Blake shot back.

Yang laughed and threw an arm around Blake's shoulders, which seemed to startle the girl, though she didn't pull away.

When they finally made it to the doors of the dorm building, Ruby gave Weiss a tug on her sleeve and a beaming smile.

"Remember, you promised an extra hour of Huntsman Royale!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. She wasn't even sure how much time that constituted, considering they hadn't actually established a standard amount of time to play in the first place.

"I remember, Ruby. I said it only an hour ago."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered, throwing her hands in the air.

It was only then that Weiss realized Ruby hadn't said that to remind Weiss, but rather to see if she was actually keeping to her promise. Which was ridiculous, wasn't it? They'd made a deal.

"Give me a few minutes, though, okay?" She stopped before the glass doors of the building, and Ruby halted by her side.

"Sure, what's up?"

Weiss shook her head. "Nothing. Go on ahead." She turned and walked into the grass, to the spot where she had taken to launching herself up to the roof the past few days. "I need to make a call."

* * *

**Sorry if this chapter was a slog. I didn't mean to take 7 and a half pages to walk to class… I tend to write a bit and then put it down and come back later, and I tend to lose track of how long any one "scene" is getting. **

**That being said, I hope you guys enjoyed! Excited to see what you guys think of the affinity system and the test. **

**Like, comment, and subsc-wait, where are we? Feel free to leave reviews! I'd love to here your thoughts. **


	12. Seeding 1-12

**Hey guys! Quick update: I made a new website for this story! The link is writingbyjace . com (no spaces, obviously, but this website sucks)**,** and I made it mostly because it will help me keep chapters and arcs more organized and because the comment section is a TON better than this site's review system. I'd like to be able to talk to you guys more easily, and this will let me do that! I'm also able to make "blog posts" and talk about/give context to some story stuff there, in the "Thought Bubbles" page. Check it out! I'll still be my releasing chapters here, too, but I may make the interludes exclusive to the website or something. Idk. Idk!**

**Anyway, enjoy!**

* * *

"I need to make a call."

Weiss' tone had an air of finality to it that worried Ruby. She looked to Yang and Blake, eyes imploring them for help. The two girls were watching after Weiss, concern written all over their faces.

That only made Ruby feel worse. She wasn't being paranoid, Yang and Blake thought something was wrong, too.

"Should I go after her?" Ruby asked as Weiss launched herself up to the roof in her peripheral vision.

The other two both turned and looked at her, Yang frowning in thought and Blake creasing her brow in determination.

"Yes," Blake said, her voice hard with confidence. "Don't let her be alone right now."

Yang's eyes flickered back up toward the edge of the roof. "But it's _Weiss_. She _likes _being alone."

"That doesn't mean that's what's best for her right now," Blake returned. "Besides," she continued, glancing at Ruby, "she actually seems to _like_ your sister's company."

Yang huffed a brief laugh out of her nose. "Yeah, not sure how the Crucible _that_ happened." She turned to Ruby. "Go make sure she's okay, Rubes."

That was all Ruby needed. She thought she should go to Weiss and both her teammates did too. With a deep breath, she shoved herself into Rose Form and looked up to the roof.

It seemed so far right now. She was sooo tired. She'd been shot for a solid thirty minutes, and she honestly just wanted to lay down and wait to fall asleep so her Aura could start recharging.

But she couldn't. Instead, she poured some of the pittance that was left of her Aura into her heart and flew up to the roof, petals scattering around her as she landed. Yeah, she definitely shouldn't risk using her Aura any more today. There was no sense in risking not having enough to get back from the Rose Dimension.

Over by what had quickly become "their spot" in the center of the roof, Weiss was pacing back and forth, her scroll gripped tightly in one hand. She had the same weirdly sad-but-furious frown that she'd had when Professor Awesome had accidently told her that her sister's team was dead-and by the way, what the friCKITY FRACK?

Ruby shook her head. As depressing and deranged and heartbreaking it was that Winter and Professor Awesome had both lost their teammates, right now Ruby needed to take care of her own. And Weiss definitely needed to be taken care of.

Ruby walked up slowly, not because she was trying to sneak up on Weiss, but because she didn't want to startle the girl. The red mark on Weiss' arm where she'd pinched herself-_hard_-when she heard the awful news was visible even from ten feet away. And Ruby was pretty sure Weiss had no idea she was doing that. It was probably a subconscious thing, like the way Yang tended to flex when she listened to fast music that made her want to fight.

Weiss hadn't noticed her, pacing as she was with her head down and turning in the opposite direction. Ruby should say something, right? Just standing here twiddling her thumbs nervously was useless and dumb and maybe a little creepy?

"... Weiss?"

Weiss' head snapped around like Ruby had just fired Crescent Rose, her eyes scarily… manic? She looked the way Ruby remembered her dad looking at Uncle Qrow that day he came home without Mom. Kind of… wild? Like she'd been so in her head that she'd forgotten there was a world around her, and fight or flight had kicked in instinctually.

But as soon as Weiss' eye met Ruby's, the wildness was blinked away, replaced by surprise.

"R-Ruby? What are y-I said I'd be right there." She wrung her fingers together and twisted her hands around in the most blatant expression of nervousness Ruby had seen from her partner yet. Weiss usually kept a really tight lid on her emotions, that moment when Ruby had given her the paints aside. But right now…

Right now she looked the way Ruby had felt when she'd been named team captain and had no idea if she would be able to do it. Doubt? Insecurity?

Ruby really wished she was better at figuring out the different kinds of sad. She'd never really needed to know the differences between them-she and her family had only ever really felt loss, and other than that they were happy. But Weiss seemed to cycle through different types of sadness the way Yang flipped through her celebrity magazines.

What should she say? That Weiss looked sad and angry and Ruby wanted to make sure she was okay? That wouldn't help, and might make things worse for the reminder of _why_ Weiss was sad and angry. That she wanted to make sure Weiss wouldn't pinch her arm off? No, that would just draw attention to the pain… What should she say?

"I… didn't want you to be alone."

Ruby was so nervous that Weiss would tell her to go away that she counted the seconds of silence, the time it took for Weiss to _say_ something.

'_One Crescent Rose, two Crescent Rose, three Crescent Rose, four Crescent Rose, five Crescent Rose, s-'_

"I'm just calling my sister, Ruby." Weiss' expression was soft, though her gaze flickered down to the ground and she frowned. Ruby knew her partner had just been reminded of what she wanted to call her sister _about_.

"Still… I don't w-" Ruby stopped. No, that wasn't the right way to say this. "If it's okay, I'd like to keep you company." It was important to make sure Weiss knew she could tell her to go away if she needed to.

Another stretch of silence-ruby was willing to guess it was five seconds again-and Weiss gave her a soft nod.

Ruby smiled, but stayed where she was. Every muscle in her wanted to jump up and down and run to Weiss' side, but her brain was telling her that would be wrong. Besides, she was _really_ tired. So instead, she stood there, folding her hands in front of herself in that way Weiss did.

To push this interaction away from this awkwardness, Ruby asked a question that had popped into her head a while ago.

"Hey, Weiss?"

Weiss' lip twitched. "Yes, Ruby?"

"Isn't your sister in Atlas?"

Weiss frowned at her questioningly. "Yes, unless she's on an assignment right now. Why?"

"Don't you need to go to the CCT to call other kingdoms?"

Realization flashed across Weiss' face. "Ah." She shifted her feet. "Normally, yes. But… I'm a Schnee."

"But… how does that help you make intercontinental scroll calls?"

"Money." Weiss said simply. "The tech to route scroll calls through the CCTs already exists-"

"Wait, it does?!" Ruby had no idea that was a thing. That's awesome!

"Yes. It's just very expensive to maintain. A couple thousand lien per day for each line, and even more if you actually make a call."

"... Oh, wow." Ruby had a hard time even imagining that kind of money. That was, like, over half a million lien per year! That was… a _lot_ of cookies. All just to be able to make calls easier?

It must be really nice to be rich. To be able to just _have_ whatever you needed and wanted. Imagine how awesome Crescent Rose will be when Ruby becomes a super rich and famous huntress! Goodbye, scrap metal blade melted down from Uncle Qrow's first weapon, Omen, hello, super awesome folded steel from the best ore on the planet! And then she could put Dust ports on the blade 'cause it would be thinner and-

And she was getting distracted.

"Okay, I'll shut up now, sorry," she said, taking a small step back.

"It's okay," Weiss said quietly, taking a seat on the raised bit of concrete. She took a deep breath, but the just sat there staring at the scroll in her hands.

A long moment passed and Ruby was hit again with just how tired she was. She _really_ wanted to sit down.

She slowly approached Weiss, worried Weiss would tell her to give her space or privacy or something. But nothing happened. Weiss' eyes flickered up when Ruby started moving, but just went back to her scroll. So she clearly knew Ruby was coming over and she was okay with it, right?

Ruby sat down beside her partner. Weiss' expression was that still, blank mask that Ruby had no clue how to read. Was she hesitating to call because she was uncertain, unsure of what to say? Or was she sad? Or angry? Or confused? It was impossible to tell, though at the very least she wasn't digging her fingernails into the pale skin of her arm again.

Maybe Ruby should say something? Prompt Weiss to come back from wherever she was right now?

"... You okay?"

The reaction was slow, like Weiss had been falling asleep and was trying to force herself to keep her eyes open, or like her thoughts were really far away and it took them a long time to get back.

"Hm?" she hummed, raising her eyebrows and turning toward Ruby. "Ah… Yes, Ruby. I'm fine."

With that, she flicked her scroll open and pressed the screen a couple times to initiate a call. The picture-avatar of the young woman she was calling was _very_ clearly her sister-pretty, pale-skinned, white haired, and eyes so blue the sky was probably jealous of them, white flecks like clouds dotting the irises.

Okay, that last part she couldn't see from the picture on the scroll. But she could guess they were there 'cause Weiss had them! Ruby snuck a quick peek at Weiss' eyes just to make sure she hadn't imagined those flecks the first four hundred and seventy three thousand bajillion million times she'd noticed them.

Yep, still there! Still super pretty.

Surprisingly, instead of raising the scroll to her ear, Weiss hit the megaphone button to put it on speaker. She was going to let Ruby listen to the whole conversation?! Ruby had been totally prepared to piece together everything from only half of the words being said, but it seemed she wouldn't have to.

The tinny 'bleep-bleep... bloop-bloop' of the scroll call ringing felt abnormally loud as it filled the air around them. It only rang twice before there was a click, and deepish, clear, teachery voice answered.

"Weiss, I wasn't expecting to hear from you so soon. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Weiss closed her eyes, hung her head, and shifted her scroll into one hand, slowly popping the knuckles on her other hand with her thumb. They each only popped once, but she kept going through that motion over and over.

"Weiss?" Winter's voice pressed after the pause had stretched for a long time.

A deep breath. "We had our first class with Professor Rustheart today," Weiss finally responded.

There was another pause, this time from Winter. "Oh? I hadn't realized he was teaching the first years… How did it go?"

Weiss opened her eyes and narrowed them at the scroll in suspicion, adding yet another pause to the conversation. Ruby did her best not to wiggle restlessly, but dang, these two were going a little hard on the whole 'thoughtful silence' thing.

"It was… fine. We did an affinity test."

There was a light huff on the other end of the line. "Really? How very standard of him."

"He said he knows you," Weiss said, her tone hanging the last two words like an invitation.

There was another long pause. "Yes. Yes we've worked-fought-together before. A few missions. He's skilled. And powerful. And he has a sense of duty that makes him a good soldier, even with all his silly bluster."

Weiss gave Ruby a sidelong glance at that last part that Ruby wasn't sure what to make of. Then she turned back to her phone.

"But why did he go with you?"

"I'm sorry?"

Weiss pursed her lips, considering how to phrase her question. "Why did he go with you when you already have your own team?"

Ruby jerked her head, surprised. Professor Awesome said Winter's team had died. Was Weiss confused? Was _Ruby_ confused? Maybe she'd misunderstood something?

"Ah," Winter said after a moment. Ruby wasn't sure what realization she'd just come to, but-

"He told you."

Weiss' jaw set and her eyes flashed angrily. "Yes. And you didn't."

Another painful pause. "No. No I didn-"

"Why not?!" Weiss exploded at her phone. Ruby jumped back in surprise, but Weiss didn't notice. "How could you keep something like the fr-f-fff… Were you _ever_ going to tell me? Did you think I wouldn't _care_? I'm not… I d-don't… I... "

She started stammering, unable to form words or even thoughts past her fast, shallow breathing.

"Weiss." Winter's voice was calm, hard. "Breathe. Count to five."

'_So _that's _where that comes from,' _Ruby thought.

Weiss huffed a dry laugh, rolling her eyes angrily, but she did it anyway. She took in two deep lungfuls of air, her shoulders moving up and down while her hands shook, pulled in tight toward herself. She hugged her hands to her chest and crossed her ankles, pressing her legs together. It was like she was trying to shrink in on herself, or hold herself together.

It was strange to watch for Ruby. Angry Weiss was so… still. Despite her deep breathing, trembling hands, and fluttering eyelids, she was almost statuesque. It was like she was frozen with emotion. It was so different from Angry Yang, who swung her arms around and yelled and did everything she could to let the world and everyone in it know she was upset. It was like instead of lashing out like Yang, Weiss lashed _in_. Was that a thing?

Angry Yang was dangerous. Angry Weiss was… vulnerable.

Ruby just wanted to give her a hug, but it seemed like a touch might break her.

"I don't under-you didn't t-why di-"

"Weiss. Count to five again."

"I don't _want _to count to five," Weiss growled back. The words seemed to shock her as soon as they left her mouth, though. Her eyes widened in surprise and she seemed to shrink down on herself even more in shame.

"Sorry," she whispered.

Winter somehow heard her quiet apology. "It's alright," she said. "Just take a moment and figure out what you want to say… Honestly, I'd like a chance to do the same."

That admission seemed to surprise Weiss, making her squint at her scroll in confusion.

This was so weird to watch. When Ruby and Yang had fights-and at this point she wasn't even sure if Weiss and Winter were _having_ a fight-they'd just yell at each other and say everything that came to mind. Sometimes, for the really serious fights like whose turn it was for the remote or who-would-win arguments (Ruby insisted every time that Uncle Qrow could beat everyone in Wonder Studio's The Revengers, but Yang said she was dumb), they'd end up wrestling. It always ended with Ruby getting hurt somehow and Yang apologizing a billion times and letting her win the argument and giving her hugs and giving her the cookie jar from where Dad kept it on the top shelf.

Yang had nobody to blame but herself when she griped about Ruby being so 'argumentative'. Why _wouldn't _she like to argue when it got her Sister Hugs and cookies?

But Weiss and Winter were different. Their arguments seemed to be a lot of silence and thoughtfulness, two things Ruby and Yang sucked at-or rather, had zero interest in getting good at.

"Alright," Weiss sighed.

On the other side of the scroll call, Winter cleared her throat. "Go ahead."

"I don't understand why you wouldn't tell me," Weiss repeated from earlier, her voice almost a whisper. She sounded so sad and… defeated? Or disappointed? Whatever it was, she was really, really sad. "Why wouldn't you tell me?" The way her eyebrows scrunched together and upward, it looked like she was _scared_ of Winter's answer.

There was another stressfully long pause, and Ruby couldn't stop herself from fidgeting. Her knee bounced up and down at about a million bajillion miles an hour. Weiss gave her a glance and reached out to gently press down on Ruby's thigh.

Ruby's knee stopped bouncing. As soon as Weiss removed her hand, it started bouncing again. Weiss rolled her eyes and turned back to her phone.

"I never chose not to tell you, Weiss," Winter said, breaking the silence. "I chose not to talk about it at all."

Weiss scowled at that. "But Professor Rustheart knew. "

"He knows because of necessity and circumstance. I didn't even tell him, Qrow did."

"Wait, she knows Uncle Qrow?" Ruby blurted out before she could stop herself. She flinched, ready for Weiss to yell at her for interrupting, but she didn't. She just gave Ruby a light frown and nodded.

"Who was that?" Winter asked.

Weiss sighed. "It's Ruby. She's sitting here with me."

"Ah. I see… That's good." Weiss' expression quirked at that assessment, but Winter continued. "Hello, Ruby."

"Hi," Ruby squeaked. She looked to Weiss to gauge her reaction and was encouraged by the small smile she found on her partner's face. "It's nice to sorta-kinda meet Weiss' awesome super soldier sister!"

Winter huffed a laugh much the way Weiss does. "Is _that_ how she describes me? I'm flattered."

"I definitely used _far_ more accurate terminology," Weiss muttered, glowering at Ruby before turning back to the scroll. "But why did Mister Qrow know?"

"Ha! 'Mister Qrow'. He'd get a kick out of that." Winter sighed. "He knew because he was there. He's the only reason I didn't die along with my team that day."

"What?" Ruby and Weiss said in unison, both of their eyes going wide.

Winter stayed silent.

"He was there?" Ruby asked, unable to keep herself from staying quiet.

"I don't want to talk about it right now," Winter said curtly.

"Winter, _tell me _what h-"

"Weiss." Winter used her sister's name like a gavel, the tone of authority silencing Weiss completely. "I am not prepared to to talk about this. It was the single worst day of my life and not something I want to relive right now. Respect that .It's not an attack on you, it's not me saying I don't trust you or don't think you care. I simply don't have it in me to talk about it… It's not about you."

Weiss sat quiet, stunned. Winter stayed silent, waiting for her sister's response. Slowly, Weiss' shoulders began to untense and she stopped trying to pop her already popped knuckles.

"Okay."

Ruby didn't know what to do. The words Winter had said seemed to be kinda mean, but it made Weiss relax? She didn't understand enough about why Weiss had been upset in the first place to know what she'd reassuring now.

So instead, she decided not to try to figure it out. She reached out and lightly, hesitantly gave Weiss a supportive rub on the back-something that always made Ruby feel better when Yang did it. Weiss initially stiffened at the contact, and Ruby immediately stopped, but didn't pull her hand away, waiting to see how Weiss would react. '_Gotta give her her five seconds, right?'_

When Weiss turned and gave her another tiny smile, Ruby knew it was okay, and she recommenced Operation Supportive Back Rubs.

"I'm sorry, Weiss," Winter said. " I was never deliberately keeping anything from you. I just couldn't talk about it for so long, and after a while it just felt better to not bring it up."

Sadness flickered across Weiss' eyes. "When did it happen?"

"Three years ago."

Weiss nodded slowly, like she'd been expecting that answer. "_That's_ why I didn't hear from you for so long. Almost two years."

"Yes," Winter confirmed, a strain in her voice.

Wow, Weiss didn't get to talk to her sister for two _years_? Ruby couldn't imagine going two _days_ without Yang.

"I thought I'd said something wrong," Weiss confessed.

"No. _No._" Winter's voice had a bit of that hard edge again there. "It wasn't you, Weiss. I'm so sorry that you ever thought that. I didn't know. I just… shut down. I... "

"You lost your family," Weiss finished for her.

"... Yes."

Weiss' face twisted again. "I'm your family too, Winter."

The deep breath Winter took was audible over the scroll. "I know, Weiss. I'm sorry if I made you feel like we weren't. I didn't know how to deal with… everything, and you wouldn't have been able to relate-"

"That's not fair," Weiss cut in.

"Really?" Winter asked. "Do you think you would have understood how my team was my family, my brother and sister's in arms, three years ago? Do you remember the conversation we had less than a week ago?"

Weiss deflated, shoulders slumping. It was weird seeing her without her perfect posture. She glanced at Ruby with a weird look on her face-was that guilt?-before quickly looking away.

"I would have _tried_," Weiss protested weakly.

"I know, Little Sister. I just… I needed time, and solitude. At least, I thought I did."

Weiss' chin raised at that. "So will you talk to me about it now? Not today! But… later?"

She looked so hopeful and distressed at the same time, Ruby just wanted to hug her and never let go.

"Yes," answered Winter, causing Weiss to let out the breath she was holding. "Not right now, probably not in the immediate future. I need to prepare for that conversation, and I have responsibilities right now that I need to be focused on. And I'll probably consult my therapist before we talk. You're coming back to Atlas for winter break, correct?"

Ruby wanted to giggle at the weirdness of a girl named Winter talking about winter break, but Weiss was still in super serious mode, so she stopped herself.

"I am," Weiss replied. "You're seeing a therapist?"

"... I am. General Ironwood has been insisting I see one since that day. I finally relented a bit over a year ago. It's helped."

Weiss gave a non-committal "hm".

"Therapy is one of many things our father is wrong about, Weiss."

That made Weiss frown and look away. Ruby wondered what Weiss' dad thought about therapy, then. Did he not like it?

"'Therapy is help, and needing help means weakness,'" Weiss said in a monotone voice, like she was reciting something.

"'And Schnees aren't weak,'" Winter finished. "I know. But he's wrong. It's… We'll discuss this later, if that's alright. In person."

Weiss' gaze flickered back over to Ruby, and it took her a moment to realize what might be going on.

"Oh! I can go-"

She'd hopped to her feet and was ready to run and give the Schneesters some privacy, but Weiss' hand shot out and grabbed hers before she could go anywhere.

"No! Stay… please." Weiss frowned and looked down at her lap as she said the last word, and she pulled her hand back quickly. "I mean, I'd appreciate if… you can... I-"

Ruby plopped back down with a smile. It was official-they were friends! Weiss wanted Ruby to stay! That was pretty cool.

Ruby wiggled back and forth happily, bumping Weiss' shoulder with her own with her movement. Weiss didn't seem to mind too much.

"Well," Winter spoke up, and her voice was different now, warmer, "how did class go _other_ than the world shattering secret revealing? How was the affinity test?"

"Sweet!" Ruby chirped immediately. "Weiss shot me a bunch and it turns out I have super high resistances to everything and gravity is my best one and Professor Awesome said that means I'll be a good team leader and it turns out Yang is even stronger than I thought she was and Weiss is too and it was really cool!"

There was a pause after Ruby stopped talking. Weiss was looking at her, lips pursed in amusement.

"I take it Nidas is Professor Awesome?" Winter said.

"Yeah!"

Winter chuckled at that, a sound that was less jingly than the wind-chime sound Weiss made when she chuckled, but more resonant. "And you, Weiss? Is ice still your forte?"

"It is."

"What about you, Miss Winter?" Ruby asked. "Are you the same as Weiss? All ice magic-y?"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her while Winter answered. "I was. Earth is actually my highest affinity now."

"Wait, really?" Weiss asked, jerking in surprise.

"It can change?" Ruby added.

"Yes, really," Winter answered. "And yes, Ruby. The numbers will always be fluctuating as you grow, though usually the order of your affinities stays the same. I am a… special case. Though it's not too strange-earth was my second highest by a pretty close margin before."

Weiss frowned. "Winter, Professor Awes-Rustheart-" she scowled at Ruby, but Ruby just grinned in response and booped her shoulder- "said he believes affinity is related to personality."

"Yes, that doesn't surprise me."

"Do _you_?"

There was another of Winter's thoughtful pauses. "... I think I see the merits in the theory. Moreso now that I've met so many huntsman with so many affinities that seem to match their character."

Weiss slumped again at that. "So… what does it mean that my best element is ice? Am I cold and mean?"

Ruby laughed at that, but when Weiss turned to her with a sad, confused look, Ruby shut up.

"Weiss," she said, giving her a small, one-armed sideways hug, "you're awesome! Don't be ridiculous!"

Her partner gave her a tiny, grateful smile and leaned into the hug a bit as Winter spoke up.

"No, Weiss. It doesn't mean you're cold and mean. It means you're calm and thoughtful. The theory in full says that the meaning of the affinity order is largely based on the actual order itself. Are you secondary and tertiary affinities still water and air?"

"Yes." Weiss answered.

Holy crapoly, it was so cool that Winter remembered all that. Should Ruby have Yang's affinities memorized? Was that a thing you were supposed to do, memorize your sister's affinities?

"If you'd like," Winter continued, "I can link you an article-well, a paper, really-that Doctor Watts wrote on the subject, back before he… suffered a mental break."

Weiss raised her eyebrow at that. "Is it… accurate? Or crazy?"

Winter chuckled. "The man was still brilliant, despite his tragic fall. He did extensive studies and the paper he wrote was incredibly in-depth. It's worth reading, if you're interested in understanding the theory."

Weiss nodded slowly to herself. "Yes, I'd like that. Thank you, Winter."

"Of course, Little Sister. And I-oh, one second." There was the sound of another voice from Weiss' scroll, and Winter had a short conversation with whoever else was there. "Yes…. Alright, and Penny?... And Titus?... Alright, tell them I'll be there shortly… Yes." The sound of a door closing clicked across the line, and Winter sighed.

"Duty calls, Little Snowflake. I'm afraid I have to go."

Weiss put on one of those weirdly sad smiles. "It's okay. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me."

'_What the heck?'_ Who talks like that? Who talks to their _sister_ like that. Weiss was so weird…

"Of course. I look forward to hearing from you again soon. I love you, Weiss."

Weiss' smile lost some of its sadness. "I love you, too."

_*Click!*_

As soon as the line went dead, Weiss breathed out a deep, shuddering sigh. She stared down at her hands, lacing her fingers together and turning her palms up, her scroll laid across them. The anger that had been boiling in her before the call was gone now, but some of the sadness was still there for some reason.

"You okay?" Ruby asked after the silence had grown unbearably long.

Weiss straightened up with a princessy "ahem", paused, and then slumped again with a sigh. "I don't know," she admitted.

"But what's wrong?" Ruby pressed, confused. "Wasn't what she said… good?" Winter had said it wasn't Weiss' fault, that she hadn't deliberately kept anything from Weiss, she just hadn't wanted to talk about it at all. That was good for Weiss, right?

"Yeah," Weiss sighed. "It's just… Imagine what it would feel like if Yang felt like she couldn't talk to you about the worst day of her life, ever."

Ruby paused and tried to imagine that. She tried to imagine anything-good _or_ bad-happening to Yang and her not telling Ruby about it as soon as they saw each other again.

She tried… But she couldn't.

"I can't. Yang and I tell each other everything." Now she could see the problem Weiss was dealing with, why she was sad. If Yang somehow kept a big, giant, terrible secret from Ruby and Ruby ended up finding out on accident from a professor, she'd probably be upset too.

Weiss simply nodded. "Yeah. Winter and I aren't close in the same way you and Yang are, but I thought we shared everything important with each other. For so long she was all I had, and then I lost her for a bit and didn't understand why, and now I have her back, but it turns out I didn't. Not totally. I just... Ugh!" She dropped her face into her hands and took another shaky breath.

Ruby wrapped her arm around her partner again and doubled down on Operation Supportive Back Rubs.

There was a _ding!_ from Weiss' scroll, and she pulled it open and briefly checked a message before closing it with another of her tiny smiles. It was too fast for Ruby to see what the message said.

"What was that?" she asked, hoping the question wasn't too nosey.

"Oh, just the link to the paper Winter talked about. I'll read it later."

"Oh, right. Is that just a thing you and your sister do? Read scientist research papers?"

Weiss did that smiley-eye roll. "Yes, we enjoy being educated and informed. Science papers, business reports, political articles, agricultural forecasts… It's a habit our father ingrained in us." Her face fell as she mentioned him. "A good one, though."

"Well that sounds… super smartical!" Ruby chirped. She'd been thinking it sounded _boring_, but that would be mean and probably dumb to say. If Weiss read that stuff, that meant smart people read that stuff, so she shouldn't make fun of if. Maybe she should read it too? If she wanted to be the best team leader ever, she'd need to be smart and stuff.

"Is 'smartical' one of your and Yang's special 'intellectual adjacent' words?" Weiss asked with a teasing lip quirk.

"Yeah! We have dibs. Hands off."

Weiss raised her hands in mock surrender and leaned into Ruby's side-hug. After a moment, she said, "Thanks for… being here. With me."

Ruby gave the girl a squeeze. "Of course, Weiss. We're partners. And…" she glanced at Weiss. "Friends?"

Weiss gave her a big, happy looking smile. "Friends," she confirmed with a nod.

Ruby gave a happy side-to-side wiggle at that. "... BFFs?" she asked. She'd always wanted a BF-

"Ew, what?"

Ruby's eyes went wide. That was totally not the reaction she was expecting. "Oh, okay."

"No, Ruby, I mean what does that even mean?"

"Oh!" Ruby let out a breathless laugh as her nerves came back. "It means 'best friends forever'!"

"That sounds dumb."

"Oh."

Weiss gave a light, wind-chimey chuckle at Ruby's face and patted her knee. "So… I know I promised extra dolt-ery tonight, but I'd like to play the piano for a bit before we do that."

That made sense. Playing music seemed to be Weiss' relaxation technique, like Ruby and Yang with their shows and games-or Yang with her freaking hair brushing. (Seriously, she _really_ likes brushing her hair.) And Ruby could imagine Weiss needed to relax right now.

"Okay! Do you mind if I listen?"

Another smile. "Not at all. Just…" Weiss' expression flickered. "I'm feeling alright now. Don't feel like you need to stick around and be bored listening to me play an instrument just to make sure I'm okay."

Ruby gave her partner another squeeze. "Don't be a doofus, Weiss! Your music sounds awesome! And I can go grab some paper and doodle and stuff."

Weiss gave an adorable frowny-pout. "I'm not a doofus." Ruby giggled. "But that sounds nice. You know… you could also read the other chapter for History."

Ruby scrunched her nose at that, earning an amused huff from Weiss. "But then we couldn't read it together!" Ruby countered.

Weiss blinked strangely at that, opening her mouth and then immediately closing it like she didn't know how to respond.

"Can I ask you for a favor, though?" Ruby asked, changing the subject so Weiss wouldn't be stuck awkwardly floundering.

"Of course."

Ruby glanced at the edge of the roof. "Can you help me get down? I'm kinda burned out on Aura." She couldn't stop the sheepish, embarrassed grin that crept onto her face at having to ask for such silly help. This wouldn't be an issue if she was just stronger and had more Aura!

But Weiss just chuckled lightly, standing and offering a hand to Ruby, pulling her to her feet. "Of course," she repeated.

Woohoo! That meant Ruby would get to jump around on Weiss' glyphs!

Together, they walked to the edge of the rooftop. With a soft hum, two grey snowflakes appeared in the air a few feet below them.

"Ooh, why are they grey?" Ruby asked as she peered down at the two spinning designs.

Weiss did the weird head tilt shrug. "The coloring is based on which direction they're applying force. White is push. Black is pull. Grey is just… there. A solid platform." As she finished her explanation, two more glyphs appeared further and lower out, and then another pair.

"Oh, so you're making stairs!" Ruby realized.

She'd already jumped down to the first 'stairflake' when Weiss replied, "Indeed."

It was weird, just standing in midair. She definitely felt like she was standing on a surface, but when she reached down to experimentally poke the glyph, it didn't feel like anything. Her finger pressed against what could only be described as a section of solidified air. A little cold to the touch. It was just… there. A force.

_So_ cool.

"This is awesome!" she cheered as she carefully hopped down the next two glyphs and then onto the grass at the base of the dorm building.

Weiss landed beside her elegantly, using one hand to keep her skirt from billowing up. "I'm glad you like them," she said as she unsummoned the glyphs. Unsummoned? Was that a good word for it? Maybe dismiss? Or dematerialize?

Hmph. A conunderum.

She followed her partner into the dorm. "Hi Bob!" she greeted the robo-butler with a wave.

"Greetings, Miss Rose. How might I assist you today?"

Woops. "Oh, no, you're good. I was just saying hi."

Weiss turned to give Ruby an amused smirk, to which Ruby just shrugged.

When Weiss walked past the piano, though, Ruby got confused. "Didn't you want to play?" she asked, pointing toward the small stage.

"Yes, I just want to put up Myrtenaster first."

"Oh, right." Ruby had honestly forgotten she'd had Crescent Rose hooked on her back, she was so used to and comfortable with her presence. Although she supposed it might be weird to sit on the piano bench chair thingy with a sword strapped to her side, so Weiss wanting to put up her weapon made sense.

When they got back into their room, Weiss went about putting Myrtenaster in its case, meticulously removing the Dust vials she'd loaded into it and placing them in the little indent slots in the case's padding. Ruby grabbed some loose printer paper from her stack on her desk and some colored pencils. She also begrudgingly grabbed the dumb textbook, 'A Stupid Study of the Four Lamedoms'. She probably wouldn't read it, but it would make for a good hard surface to draw on.

But then Weiss shot her a proud smile when she grabbed the book, and Ruby internally groaned as she realized she now _had_ to read it. She couldn't make Weiss that proud and then _disappoint_ her. No way.

After she got everything ready, Ruby looked around and wondered, '_Wait, where are Yang and Blake?'_ They'd come back to the room, hadn't they?

Ruby wandered around, peeking under the beds, half expecting her sister to jump out and _try_ to scare her (it never worked, though, never ever, at all). Nope, nobody there. Their bathroom door was open and the light was off, so they weren't there either. Out of consequence of looking around more than anything else, Ruby looked at the window and-

Aha! Yang's bright yellow hair was easily visible through the blinds. She was down in the courtyard that sat between their dorm and the other three dorms for the other class years. She was laying on her back, head resting on her hands, her feet propped up against the tree whose shade she was enjoying. From the way she was moving her head and sometimes waving her arm, it looked like she was talking. And that meant...

Yep! There was Blake, sitting back against the tree, perpendicular to Yang, a book propped up on her folded legs. It was kinda hard to tell 'cause they were so far away, but it looked like Blake wasn't getting much reading done 'cause she kept turning to say something to Yang.

Then Yang started doing sit-ups, and Blake turned back to her book.

Weiss walked up beside Ruby and followed her gaze. She rolled her eyes when she found Yang. "How she has the energy to workout right now is beyond me," she muttered.

Ruby giggled. "Yang is super stronk!" she answered simply.

"Stronk?" Weiss asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Yep!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and shook her head, turning back to look at their two teammates. "Poor Blake," she sighed.

"Huh?"

Weiss gestured at the pair below them, where Yang had finished however many sit-ups she was doing in a set and was laying down again, arms splayed out like she was making a grass angel and stopped to take a break. "She's just trying to read, and she has to deal with that ridiculous monkey of a person while she does!"

Ruby laughed. Monkey person. "Yeah, but now she gets to read _and_ talk to Yang. That's, like, a super win!"

Weiss snorted and turned away. "You clearly can't be objective when it comes to your sister."

"Yuh-huh I can! Yang is awesome!" Ruby sorta-whined back.

Weiss turned and gave her a _look_, like she'd missed something very obvious. She had no idea what it could be, though…

Regardless, she fell in step beside Weiss as they made their way back down to the lobby, clutching her textbook and paper and colored pencils to her chest. It looked like Weiss had a binder in her hands.

"What's that?" she asked, nodding to the item in question with her chin.

"Sheet music," Weis answered, flipping it open to give Ruby a glance at the first page.

'Canon in D'. Hm. Cannons were cool. A little outdated though.

"I have most of these memorized," Weiss said, rifling through the pages to find a particular song. "But I only started this one a couple months ago. I'm still trying to get it down."

'Moonlight Sonata.' Ruby had no idea what a sonata was, but moonlight was pretty! And the moon itself was really pretty too, even with all the broken bits. Maybe _because_ of the broken bits.

"I'm sure you'll get it," Ruby said, giving Weiss a shoulder bump of encouragement.

Weiss nodded. "I'm sure I will, too. Just need practice." She started and quickly turned to Ruby. "Oh! I mean… thank you."

Ruby giggled, but settled on another shoulder bump rather than more words. She was feeling pretty tired, and it was hard to think of anything to say. She just hoped Weiss wouldn't end up pinching herself for messing up notes on this 'Moonlight Sonata' like she'd pinched herself a couple days ago over that note on the violin. She'd have to make sure to watch for that.

Ruby plopped down on one of the sofas arranged around the glass table in the center of the lobby while Weiss set herself up at the piano. It wasn't a terribly comfy couch-rough cloth instead of leather and set a bit too far away from the table for her to actually set her papers down. The whole set up was made more to look good than it was to actually be nice to sit at.

Ruby did her best to get comfortable, wiggling her butt into the cushions and tucking her legs up, leaning back. She rested her textbook on her legs, so she kinda looked like Blake did sitting against the tree, and placed a sheet of paper on the hardcover. She got her normal pencil and started drawing-the great Battle of Beacon, in which General Flappy Feet and his trusty second-in-command, Captain Pecks-a-Lot, had to fight back hordes of evil aliens while Admiral Zymdood of the Alien Armada cackled maniacally in the background from on top of his giant UFO.

Yeah, it was a work of art.

The whole battle was created with Weiss' awesomely pretty piano music. She clearly started with the things she knew, because it all flowed perfectly and just sounded… really good. Ruby wasn't sure how to "talk music", but she knew it sounded amazing. Really relaxing.

Keeping her knees tucked up was getting really tiring… She decided to lie down, holding the textbook and paper with one hand and lightly shading in some color with the other (she always started with red, of course). Weiss kept her music going, something soft like a lullaby.

The textbook was really heavy too... With a sigh, Ruby set her stuff down on the floor in front of the couch and decided to just listen to the music. It was really nice, after all.

Dang, the lights were also really bright… Ruby closed her eyes so she could just focus on the music… There was a fast bit, and then a slow bit, and then…

"Hrrrmph?" she grunted as something jostled her.

"It's just me, Rubes," Yang's voice answered her. She picked Ruby up, one hand under her shoulders and another under her knees. "Let's get you to bed, 'kay?"

"Okerhh," she answered, leaning into her sister's warmth and giving up on opening her eyes. "Wurr's Weiss?" she mumbled, swinging a hand out like she could grab her partner out of the air.

A cool hand grabbed hers and tucked it into her side, wedging it between her body and Yang's. "I'm right here, Ruby," Weiss' princessy voice answered.

"Ah liked yur musihh…" Ruby said, trying and failing to turn her head toward her partner.

"Thank you," came Weiss' reply. "I like your… penguin… huntsman… aliens." She heard the sound of a paper rustling. Weiss must be carrying her stuff.

She giggled, though she was really sleepy and it kinda just came out as a huff. "I'sss Gernal Furpy Feet," she explained.

She heard Yang whisper, "General Flappy Feet", and Weiss gave a small "Ah".

Ruby snuggled into Yang some more, and their movement changed. They were going upstairs now.

Blake's voice came from behind her. "Does this guy have a name?"

Ruby felt Yang turn slightly. "That's General Zymdood."

"Ahmir-rlll!" Ruby corrected.

"Right, sorry. _Admiral_ Zymdood. He's the bad guy alien dude."

"So these are recurring characters?" Weiss asked.

Ruby's face got bopped with some of Yang's hair as her sister nodded. "They've been in a great war for Remnant for two years now." There was a pause, then she spoke up again. "What's that smile doing there, Weiss? I think it must be lost!"

"Shut up, you oaf," Weiss retorted, though she didn't sound very angry. "It's a cute picture. And it's pretty decent artwork, too."

"Yeah," came Blake's voice again. "It's… I mean, those are very clearly penguins. And those are very clearly aliens. And I'm pretty sure that's Beacon Tower, right?"

"Yeah, looks like it," Weiss responded.

"Yrr," Ruby confirmed for them.

Blake laughed at the noise, and Yang gave Ruby a kiss on the forehead, which made her wrinkle her nose as Yang's hair tickled her face again. "Hrrrrr!" she protested, to no avail. It just made Yang chuckle and then _lick_ her forehead, just to be a jerk.

"HRRrrr!" Ruby whined, trying to wipe her face off on Yang's sleeve.

"You're deranged," she heard Weiss say, hopefully to Yang and not her.

Yang just laughed.

They stopped. "Could you get the door, Blakey-Blake?" Yang said. Ruby felt someone brush past her, then heard the whir and click of the door unlocking.

"I don' werna go ta bed," she grumbled as she was carried into their room.

"Well… You may get your wish, Rubes, 'cause I'm pretty sure I can't get you up there," Yang said. Sleepy Ruby brain took a moment to realize she meant her top bunk.

"It's okay," she heard Weiss say. Just put her in mine."

"Really?" Yang asked, clearly surprised.

"Really."

Ruby felt her sister shrug, and then she was being lowered. Weiss' bed was as soft as Ruby's, but it had the added bonus of Weiss-scented pillows. Yang tucked her in.

"Mm. Smells like cake," Ruby mumbled as she turned onto her side and snuggled into the pillows.

"I have vanilla scented… ampoo. That mus… king about," Weiss said. Ruby didn't catch all the words. She was really comfy and really, really tired.

"I'm feelin… ired too… ant a nap," came Blake's voice.

Yang said something to that, something like offering to put a ninja babe to bed or something. Ruby was too sleepy to figure out what that meant.

She wiggled a bit to get more comfy. This pillow smelled really nice... Why did it smell so nice?... It was also really cold, in that good way that good cold pillows were cold and good and pillowy…

She dreamed of cookies and snowflakes and penguins.

* * *

**Hey guys, quick reminder that if you leave a review as a guest I can't reply to you :( There have been a lot of nice guest reviews (maybe you're all the same person, idk) that I've wanted to say "thank you" to, and some of them have had questions that I can't answer. Just know at least that I'm not ignoring you, I just have no means of facilitating a conversation, and I'm immensely grateful for all the kind words. : )**

**Also, specifically to dol3jrut, who I can't seem to reply to for some reason (I don't understand this website), I wrote out a reply, but in the interest of not clogging up this chapter, here's a link: ****/2019/04/02/a-response-to-dol3jrut/**** (add the writingbyjace . com bit at the front).**

**Thanks for reading! I hope you liked the chapter and look forward to hearing your thoughts. Don't forget to check out the new website! :3**


	13. Seeding 1-13

Weiss turned a page in the textbook, gently sliding a finger from the top corner down to the middle of the page before flipping it over. Blake and Yang were both also reading the chapter (Yang had only agreed to at Blake's subtle insistence), though Blake had dozed off some time early on.

To be expected when she was reading lying down in her bed.

Yang was also up on her bunk, sitting with her back against the wall, legs kicking out over the edge.

"So these chariots the Valish used in battle against the Rhysokans _aren't_ like the Atlesian Chariots, right?" she asked Weiss, her voice, surprisingly, at a courteously low decibel level for their sleeping partners.

"Correct. Atlesian Chariots are an airship. They were _named _after these chariots, which were horse-drawn wheeled vehicles that provided a mobile platform for archers in battle."

"Huh," Yang replied. "Is there a picture?"

Weiss smirked to herself. "Next page."

"Oh... Oh! I get it. Okay. So with these things the Valish conquered the Rhysokans, then the… Huun-ar conquered the irrelevant dudes-"

"The Terisians," Weiss cut in.

"Right, them. And then the Valish conquered the Huun-ar. And now all that's left is the kingdom of Vale."

"Correct. And Vale City is where…?"

Yang paused. "Where the original Valish tribe settled _second_, right?"

"Correct!" Weiss repeated, pleased. Perhaps Yang wasn't a hopeless dumb blonde after all.

"'Cause their first settlement was Patch!" Yang exclaimed happily.

"It was. It seems you and Ruby have followed the migratory pattern of your ancestors," Weiss joked.

Yang blinked at her.

Well, Weiss thought it was funny. Yang was just a dumb blonde, what did she know about good humor?...

"So how'd that talk with second-best big sister go?" Yang asked, turning back to Weiss.

"Ah. Well... " Weiss floundered. This wasn't something she wanted to talk about. It had made her anxious enough having Ruby be a part of that-though the support of her presence made up for it-but to tell _Yang_ about it?

"You don't have to go into any details," Yang couched. "But… did it go okay?"

What was this? Did Yang really _care_ if her talk with Winter had gone well? Why would she? It's not like they'd been all the pleasant to each other. It's not like they were friends. Just…. teammates. Teammates who both had a fondness of a certain bubbly brunette that was currently snoring lightly in Weiss' bed.

But if Yang was asking… it would be rude not to answer.

"It did," Weiss said. "It… there are some… difficulties-or rather, hurts-that weren't entirely resolved, but they will be. Winter said she'd tell me everything when we next see each other in person."

"When will that be?"

"Winter break, most likely." There was nothing Weiss was looking forward to more. A chance to talk to Winter again, to talk to her about something that _mattered_? To get the chance, finally, to try to help her? To pay her back for the years of care and support she'd given Weiss for absolutely nothing in return other than Weiss' somewhat annoying company?

Winter break couldn't come soon enough.

And it would be a chance for Weiss to come clean about her own secret, the reason she hadn't wanted to attend Atlas Academy. It wasn't as… tragic or world-shattering of a secret as Winter's was, but Weiss was certain it would hurt her sister all the same. She just hoped she could do something, say something, to make it better when the time came.

Yang's snicker pulled her back out of her thoughts.

"You're gonna see Winter on winter break?"

Weiss rolled her eyes.

"Double winter, what does it meeean?!" Yang giggled. Weiss didn't understand the joke.

"Yes, yes," she griped. "She's named after a season. Very funny, haha."

"Lighten up, Weissicle. Our mom was named after a season, too. We got to have the ol' double summer breaks when we were kiddos."

Weiss turned in her seat to look at Yang. She should ask, right? It would be better to ask Yang; she clearly had a better handle on the grief than Ruby did, and Weiss was so scared to bring it up with Ruby and cause that joyful, happy face to go sad… Weiss knew she wasn't a fantastic person, but if she made _Ruby_ sad, she was truly awful.

She should ask. This was the best chance to get some answers, with Ruby asleep.

"M-may I ask what happened? To your mom, I mean."

Yang narrowed her eyes and tilted her head thoughtfully. "The fact that your even asking makes me think you already know she's dead."

Weiss flinched at the bluntness, but then got confused by Yang's statement. Hadn't she been there when Ruby told h-oh, no. She'd been in the bathroom.

"Ruby told me. That she left for a hunt and never came back."

Yang's eyebrows shot up. "Wow, she actually talked about it?"

"Y-yes. It was the other day, before we went shopping." Weiss was starting to regret bringing this up. "Is that… unusual?"

Yang snorted. "Yeah, yeah you could say that. She's always refused to talk about it. Even acknowledge it. A part of her is still convinced Mom's somehow secretly alive. Though that's partly my fault."

"What? How so?"

Yang sighed and laid her textbook aside, flopping her hands onto her lap and looking across the room at her little sister's sleeping form.

"Ruby used to suffer night terrors," she said slowly, making Weiss' eyes widen. "Still does, really, though not as much anymore. Just on special days, like the anniversary of the day Mom and Uncle Qrow left for that hunt, or Mom's birthday… Sometimes the anniversary of the day Qrow finally came back, drunk as heck, to tell Dad…" She frowned and looked down at her hands.

"Anyway, Ruby has these night terrors of Mom getting ripped apart by Grimm-"

Weiss coughed, a knot of emotion in her throat bursting out at the awful image.

Yang smiled sadly at her. "Yeah. It's pretty bad. She'd sometimes not be able to function for _hours _after waking up, just sobbing and shaking. So I told her 'No, silly, the Grimm didn't get to Mom. She realized she was in trouble and burst into her semblance so they couldn't get to her, and now she lives on in all the white roses in the world'-Mom's semblance was like Ruby's, but-"

"I know," Weiss interrupted. "She told me."

Yang raised an eyebrow at that and "hmmed",

"What?" Weiss asked, feeling defensive.

"Nothing," Yang said, shaking her head. "She's just… told you more than she's ever talked about with anyone not in the family."

"Oh." Weiss didn't know how to react to that. She was suddenly very conscious of herself, straightening her back, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, folding her hands in her lap, then moving them to grip the armrests of her chair.

That was… nice. That Ruby trusted her that much. That she was somehow special to a girl that already seemed to like everybody. She'd thought Ruby was just being her friend because she was _everyone's_ friend, and that she felt obligated to go through the pain of befriending Weiss because they were partners. But apparently… apparently it went beyond that?

"I thought she shared everything with everyone," Weiss said quietly, hoping Yang would tell her she was wrong.

She wasn't disappointed.

"Not everything," Yang replied quietly, turning to look at Ruby snoring form again.

Weiss' heart tha-thumped at that, and she couldn't help the smile that crept onto her face. Yang noticed and raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't say anything.

"But yeah, I told her Mom just escaped the monsters and lives on in flowers," she continued. "And it worked. She'd stop crying whenever I'd say it, not because it was nice to hear in the moment, but because she actually believes it." She frowned at those last words.

"Do… do you regret telling her that now?" Weiss asked, reading into Yang's expression.

The frown deepened, and a long hiss of air streamed from Yang's nose as she exhaled in thought. "I… I dunno. It makes her feel better. It gets her to stop crying, gets her to stop imagining her mom's body getting torn to shreds by giant monsters." Weiss flinched at the imagery again. "But it also means she isn't accepting reality. She needs to make peace with the fact that Mom's gone, and she's not coming back… For a few days after every… episode, Ruby runs around in her semblance constantly. She doesn't say why, but I know it's 'cause she's looking for Mom in her 'Rose Dimension'. It's just… not good for her. But if the alternative is… is crying Ruby, then… I don't know."

Her face fell, twisting in anguish, and Weiss had no idea what to do. She hadn't meant to cause… this. But she also felt something, some thread of connection, between her and Yang, now.

She had expected them to never get along, never relate to each other, never see anything eye to eye. They were close to polar opposites, as far as Weiss could tell. But they both cared about Ruby. They both wanted her to be happy. Maybe there they could find some common ground.

"I'm sorry," Weiss said, prompting Yang to turn her gaze back on her. "I shouldn't have brought it up. I didn't mean to make you…" She trailed off. Didn't mean to make her what? Sad? That seemed like an understatement, and it would sound… presumptive.

But Yang just shook her head. "It's okay. It's good for you to know this if you're gonna be Ruby's partn-Ruby's friend." She gave a small smile at the correction that Weiss hesitantly returned.

There was a long stretch of silence.

Okay, time to end this emotionally charged conversation.

"So… you have a lot of Aura," she said, tactfully and seamlessly changing the subject.

Yang snorted and nodded slowly, realizing what Weiss was doing. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. I believe the scientific term is "a metric fuckton", but I'll defer to your expertise there."

That definitely _wasn't_ a scientific term, but it was pretty clear Yang knew that and was just making a joke.

…. Probably.

Weiss didn't know what she was supposed to say, so she just smiled lightly in response.

Yang frowned a little, but let it go, shifting to get more comfortable and shifting her gaze to the ceiling. "Yep," she said, breaking the awkward silence. "I guess I'm the team's tank."

"Tank?" Weiss questioned. What did that mean? Her gauntlets doubled as shotguns, how was she supposed to be a tank?

Yang smiled. "Gamer thing. Means I… well, I get into the middle of the baddies and try to take all the hits."

"Ah. I was planning to make you do that anyway." She offered Yang a sly grin to try to make it clear she was just joking (mostly).

Yang raised another eyebrow at her and smirked. "Oh yeah? How were planning to make me do that if I didn't want to?"

Weiss rolled her eyes in a smile. "Hey, my glyphs can launch you _pretty _far."

Yang broke into a chuckle at that. "I like it. Just catapult me into the fight. Yangapult!"

Now Weiss rolled her eyes for real. "That's a _terrible_ name."

Her gripe was dismissed with a light shrug. "At least it's better than Ruby's 'operation' names," Yang countered.

"True." Weiss turned to look at her partner. Ruby chose that moment to let out a little snort and roll over, facing the room. Sunlight filtering in from the blinds fell across her eyelids. She frowned in her sleep, her face screwing up in that adorable pout. After a long few seconds of that, she jerked her arm to her face to rub grumpily at her eyes, rolling onto her back in the process.

Slowly, her eyes blinked open.

"Morning, sleepy-head," Yang said with a smile.

'_Morning? It's early evening…' _Weiss was about to speak up when Ruby sleepily mumbled a reply.

"I'sss mornern already?" She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand again.

"Yep!" Yang said, far too cheerily for a liar. "You missed class. Weiss wants to skewer you."

"WHAT?!" Ruby jumped up, smacking into the bottom of her upper bunk with a burst of rose petals and letting out a small whimper before rolling onto the floor. "I gotta-!"

She looked around, taking in sleeping Blake, rolling-with-laughter Yang, and Weiss, who was still blinking off her surprise at the sudden burst of noise and movement.

"No no!" she quickly said, waving her arms to try to get Ruby to calm down. "Relax! It's only been a couple hours. Yang's just being an ass." She shot a glare at the blonde as she said that last part and got nothing but a satisfied, sing-song "hee hee!" in return.

"Oh," Ruby sighed, her shoulders sagging in relief. "Okay. Good." She calmly turned around and reached down to straighten out Weiss' pill-

In another flash of movement, Ruby grabbed one of Weiss' pillows and hurled it across the room. It smacked Yang in the chest, a little to one side, and flopped down into her lap lazily. Yang looked down at the pillow, up at Ruby, and back down at the pillow.

Ruby straighten out her combat skirt, pulling down the hem with a huff, and turned to Weiss.

"Sorry about her. I'm still fairly certain she and Zwei switched brains at some point a couple years ago, 'cause now she ju-EEP!"

The poor girl tipped sideways, her upper body almost perpendicular to her lower body, and slammed into Weiss' bed as blur of white hurtled across the room and nailed her in the side of the face.

"Yang!" Weiss shouted, jumping out of her chair to rush to Ruby, who was laying with her legs splayed out in the air, not moving. She pulled her pillow off of Ruby's head to make sure she was okay and-

Laughing. Ruby was laughing.

Her tiny giggles were just barely making her shoulders shake, and she was letting out tiny "hck hck" noises. She rolled over and pushed herself up, giving Weiss' miffed and slightly annoyed face a pat on the cheek.

"Fine, Yang!" she jokingly growled. "Fine. I see how it is."

Yang just stuck out her tongue.

"You two are idiots," Weiss declared, subsequently getting more annoyed that neither sister seemed to care.

"What in the name of all that is dusty is going on in here?" growled a very perturbed looking Blake. She propped herself up on her hands and shook her head to wake herself up. Her bow wiggled a bit in the process and she quickly reached up to slap it down and fix it in place.

She was certainly dedicated to that style choice.

"Oh nothin'," Yang said lightly. "Just reminding Ruby who the champ is."

Ruby scowled up at her sister. "You're dumb."

Yang just smiled and waved her sister towards her. "Now come here, knucklehead. We're studying the young histories."

Weiss frowned, not understanding why "the histories" were young, but Ruby either understood or didn't care.

"Story studies?!" she asked excitedly, already halfway up the ladder to Yang's bunk.

"Yeah, why not?" Yang replied. "It's been a while."

Ruby crawled up to her sister's side and leaned into her, resting her head on Yang's shoulder while the blonde put her arm around her and pulled her closer, settling the textbook in her lap.

"Alright, I'll restart the chapter," Yang said after giving Ruby a kiss o nthe top of the head. "I'm not too far in."

"What are you doing?" Weiss finally blurted out.

Ruby and Yang both turned to her, surprised.

"Oh, uh, well…" Ruby stammered.

Yang gave her a light squeeze and answered for her. "I'm reading the history chapter to her." She leveled a look at Weiss that seemed to dare the girl to argue.

Weiss decided to take that dare.

"Can't she read it herself?"

Ruby pouted a little bit, so lightly that Weiss suspected it was a very _real_ pout, as opposed to the adorable, exaggerated, playful one she'd come to know. "I guess I can," Ruby said, moving to get off the bunk.

Yang gave her another squeeze to hold her in place.

"Yes, she can. But Dad figured out that she remembers this stuff better if it's read to her like the way we'd read her stories when she was little. So that's what we're doing." She reached up and tousled Ruby's hair, slyly also using the motion to push Ruby back into her shoulder.

"Oh. Alright." Weiss wasn't entirely sure what to say to that. It seemed like an incredibly strange way to learn, but Yang had fifteen years of experience on her when it came to dealing with Ruby…

Hopefully Ruby would remember what she and Weiss had studied together yesterday.

The two sisters wiggled a bit to get comfortable, and Weiss spared a glance at Blake to see her reaction. The girl met her eyes with an amused smile on the edge of her lips and shrugged. A giant yawn took over her at that moment, and she covered her mouth with one hand and stretched the other over her head, pulling her shirt up and revealing her pale, smooth stomach-more than her outfit already revealed, that is.

She was dressed a bit too revealingly for Weiss' tastes, as was Yang, but alas, Weiss didn't have the authority to make them change their outfits. If only she was team leader… Maybe she could convince Ruby to say something.

As she turned back to her own textbook to finish going through the end-of-chapter questions, Yang began reading aloud.

"_The first known civilizations are hunter-gatherer societies that originated in the central and southeastern regions of Sanus East, to the southeast of the Midland Mountains and what is now the kingdom of Vale."_

Weiss was having trouble getting through the questions she was trying to read with this background noise. Struggling not to grind her teeth together, she glanced back to look at the sisters, and maybe she'd get lucky and Yang would notice her glare and shut up.

It didn't work at all.

Instead, her expression softened immediately at the image of Ruby cuddled into Yang's side, bright silver eyes following along on the page as Yang read, the hand that was around Ruby's waist now giving her light scratches on the head, fingers running through the brunette's hair. It was… sweet. Weiss had never had anything like this with Winter-mostly because she'd never even known to _want_ it, but seeing how close and affectionate these two were made her heart ache in a way she didn't fully understand.

Yang's reading voice was soft, far softer than Weiss ever expected the girl to speak, but it still carried well. It reminded Weiss of her public speaking lessons, how she was taught to project her voice and speak from her diaphragm, not her throat. Though Yang was doing it far more gently.

It took a while before Weiss realized Blake was watching her, a small, knowing smile on her lips. The girl was sitting back against her pillow, textbook open, but she was more interested in Weiss' face than in reading at the moment.

Weiss flushed and looked away quickly.

She turned back to her own book and tried to get back to focusing on tthe chapter review.

'_What were the three main crops produced by the Huun-ar tribes before they began trade with the Rhysokan Empire?'_

Ah, that was an easy one. Wheat, barley, and sesame. Weiss didn't yet know how Professor Oobleck structured his tests, how much they were based on memorization of these somewhat pointless facts, but Weiss was feeling confident she'd ace it, however much it was.

Next question.

'_What was gained by the Hunu-ar from their trade with the Rhysokans besides goods?'_

A bit more abstract, this one. It wasn't something that the chapter had explicitly stated verbatim, though the information was all still there, just needing condensing. It was-

"... _the first border skirmishes between the four main civilizations in the Valley. The Valish were the first to develop and devote resources to creating fortifications beyond the simple wood-and-thatch and houses that were standard up to this point, creating stone walls, forts, and castles that provided better living conditions, greater protection from the elements, and were more easily defendable." _

"What's a thatch?" Ruby interrupted, turning her head to look up at her big sister at the question.

Yang smiled. "It's like, uh, grass."

Ruby wrinkled her nose. "They used to make houses out of _grass_?"

"They weren't very _good_ houses. Which is what this is saying." Yang tapped the page in front of her as she said it.

Okay, it was time to speak up.

It was Blake that spoke first, though, right as Weiss opened her mouth to correct Yang.

"It's not _grass_, technically," Blake said, leaning to see around the edge of Yang's bunk. "It's usually straw or reeds, packed together really tightly. It kept rain out and insulated the house pretty well, actually."

Weiss smiled, glad that there was someone else on the team that was both educated _and_ willing to educate the two goofballs.

"Isn't straw just really long grass, though?" Yang asked.

Weiss rolled her eyes, though Blake just smiled. "Kinda," she said. "It's a little bit different."

"Oh. Okay, thanks Blakey-Blake!"

_Now_ Blake rolled her eyes, though she also smiled almost imperceptibly at the nickname.

As Yang continued her reading, Weiss sighed and flipped back a few pages to where the blonde was at and started reading along. There was no way she could focus on the questions with this noise, and she didn't want to just get up and leave and look like a massive jerk, and she might as well go through the chapter again, as another read through couldn't hurt…

And it seemed like Blake was following along, too. Which meant the whole team was now listening and reading along with Yang, which filled Weiss with a sense of… what was this, camaraderie? That was the best word Weiss could think of. This satisfied feeling of being a part of a team that was all in sync was… cool. It was cool.

"_The development of the stone and mortar structures proved to be a critical advantage for the Valish in their conflict against the Huun-ar, which came a little over a century after the building of the first castle began. The walls proved to be able to withstand sieges, weather, and time, and indeed many long stretches of wall and old stone homes and forts are still standing in Vale City to this day."_

Weiss followed along with Yang's voice, chiming in every now and again to answer Ruby's questions or correct Yang's pronunciations.

Studying had always been something that Weiss had done out of a sense of duty, something she simply knew she _had_ to do. But this time… this time she actually enjoyed it.

* * *

All sixteen of the freshmen huntsmen were seated at tables in the small room, divided into their teams. Professor Ozpin stood at the front of the class, an empty whiteboard and a podium with a stack of papers in front. Three professors-Goodwitch, Port, and Oobleck-were also there, standing off to the side and watching quietly. Weiss didn't know why.

"Now that we're all here," Professor Ozpin finally spoke, "we can begin."

Beside her, Ruby did that silly side-to-side wiggle of excitement. On her other side, Blake watched silently in that way that she had that made Weiss think the girl knew far more about whatever was going on. Next to Blake, Yang cracked her knuckles like Ozpin had just announced they were about to get in a bar fight.

"Welcome to Huntsman One-oh-one," the headmaster said, clapping his hands together. "In this class we'll be going over a variety of things pertaining to the lives of huntsmen, from your public presentation and how to act with the media, to your relationship with law enforcement and military, to the particulars of accepting a Hunt contract. In November, we'll also have your driving course." He glanced at Ruby briefly.

Weiss straightened up and pushed her shoulders back at the mention of public presentation, adjusting her hands a bit where they were folded in front of her to make sure they were symmetrical.

Ruby's hand shot up.

"To begin-yes, Miss Rose?"

Ruby quickly shrank down, nervous in the face of all the attention that just turned to her. "Oh, uh… I was just wondering how we can get into the Huntsman Royale games…"

Professor Ozpin's eyebrows slowly raised higher and higher while their classmates laughed. Weiss slapped her forehead.

"Yeah!" someone yelled from their right. Nora. "I wanna be a video game character too! Who do I need to hit-uh, talk to-to make that happen?"

This time it was Ren that slapped his forehead. Pyrrha giggled behind the back of her hand while Jaune slunked so far down in his chair it seemed like he was trying to retract into a turtle shell.

The headmaster cracked a small smile. "Well, for legal reasons you won't be able to be put into any games until you graduate-"

"Awww," Ruby and Nora both said at the same time. Weiss slapped Ruby's arm with the back of her hand, causing the girl to give her a sad pout.

Professor Ozpin saw the exchange and quirked an eyebrow again, but said nothing of it. "So we'll perhaps save that conversation for a later date. Now…" He picked up the stack of papers in front of him and began walking around the room to pass them out, four to each team leader. "Today, we won't be talking about any of those big things. Today we'll be talking about you."

As he said it, his eyes were passing over Yang, and she blinked in surprise.

"Me?" she asked, pointing at herself like everyone wouldn't know who 'Me' was supposed to refer to.

"I think he just means us all, in general," Blake said quietly, leaning toward her partner.

"Oh. Right." Yang scratched her head in a very Ruby-ish way. "I meeean, if you guys _wanna_ talk about me, that's cool. I'm, like, pretty awesome."

Weiss rolled her eyes and turned to Ruby, holding out a hand to take one of the papers. Ruby passed her three, and after a bit of confusion, Weiss passed the two extras to Blake. Then she looked down at the page and…

'_Oh no.'_

It was a 'Get to Know You' paper, filled with idiotic questions like "What's your favorite color?", "What's your favorite movie?", "What's your favorite food?", and more. Inane questions that had nothing to do with anything.

Trepidation building, Weiss flipped the page over… but the backside was filled with different sorts of questions. "How does your semblance work?" "A pack of beowolves stands in front of you. How do you approach the fight?" "Your partner and a bus full of civilians are both in life threatening danger, and you only have time to save one of them. Who do you save?"

_These_ were questions for huntresses.

"As you may have noticed, the two sides of this page have very different questions," Professor Ozpin said, slowly returning to his lectern. "The front side, with questions about your favorite color and the like, are optional, and meant to spark conversations between you and your teammates.

"The other side has questions I want you to think about thoroughly. You don't have to write down full answers to all of them, but I want you to get a good idea at least in your head of what a full answer would be. In the next thirty to forty-five minutes, my fellow professors and I-" he gestured toward the three professors that were watching the class off to the side "-will each come visit one of your teams to discuss some of those points with you. I encourage you to discuss these questions with your team, to seek other perspectives or talk through your own answers."

There was a pause as Professor Ozpin's gaze scanned the room, making eye contact with each student. "You may begin."

The silence immediately broke, a dam of conversation flooding the room as all the teams turned to each other to discuss.

"Okay, Team RWBY!" Ruby chirped. "Here's what we're gonna do! We'll each answer these questions on our own and then we'll try to guess what the others put down!"

"That sounds ridiculously pointless," Weiss objected.

"Are we doing both sides?" Blake asked. Weiss gave her an exasperated look for being so willing to comply with this silly idea, but Blake just gave her a light smirk.

"Yeah!" Ruby answered happily.

Yang leaned forward to get a better view of her sister, her long hair draping over her shoulder and down to the tabletop. "But Rubes, we already know, like, everything on here about each other."

Ruby's nose scrunched up in thought. "Yeah… Okay, We'll do these and then the guess part will be between partners, and then if we have time Weiss and Blake can do it with each other too!"

"Ridiculously pointless," Weiss repeated.

"Wei-eisss, come ooon!" Ruby whined. "It'll be funnn!"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine. But make sure you do the back side first, because that's actually the _important_ stuff. This side is just… fluff."

"Your face is fluff," Ruby grumbled with one of those exaggerated pouts, but she flipped her page over and started on the back all the same.

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Blake quietly wondered aloud. Weiss gave her an amused smile that the raven-haired girl returned before they both set to work on their "work"sheets.

A productive, calm quiet settled over the group. There was more discussion happening at a couple of the other tables that Weiss found rather distracting, but she did her best to push it from her mind.

At one point, Yang muttered, "These are hard." Weiss couldn't help but agree. The questions were obviously designed to make her think and evaluate her personality and priorities, and it annoyed that she didn't have ready answers for them.

'_I guess I don't know myself as well as I thought.'_

After about ten minutes, Professor Ozpin wandered up to their table, standing opposite the four of them.

"A little quiet over here, aren't we?"

Ruby gave him a big, undeterred smile. "We have to keep our answers secret from each other."

Professor Ozpin's eyebrow raised up again, the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips. "Miss Rose, I do believe that is the exact _opposite _of the purpose of this assignment."

Weiss shot Ruby a 'I told you so' glare, but Ruby just smiled and pushed Weiss' face away, much to her annoyance.

"They have to be secret 'cause we're gonna try to guess each other's answers!" she explained happily.

"Ah," Professor Ozpin said, giving a single, slow nod. "Making a game of it, then?"

"Yeah!"

"Interesting." He smiled and walked away.

Weiss wasn't sure what was all that interesting about this. It seemed inefficient and _ridiculously pointless._ She sighed to herself. Whatever. She was almost done.

Blake finished first, laying her pen down lightly on the page and glancing over at Yang. When Yang noticed, she puckered her lips and squinted in an exaggerated suspicious face and used her left arm to shield her worksheet from Blake's view.

"No peeking, Cheaty McCheatface!"

Blake rolled her eyes. "I'm surprised you didn't go with 'Cheaty-Cheat' after your usual pattern," she teased.

"What pattern?"

"You know, Ruby-Roo, Weissy-Weiss, Blakey-Blake…"

Yang blinked at her.

Blake frowned. "You don't see a pattern here?"

That prompted a scowl from the buffoon. "There's no pattern! Each one of those is original and quality nicknamage, thank you very much!"

"Nicknamage?" Blake asked with a dubious raised eyebrow.

"Don't be jealous of my awesome words, Blake. It's unbecoming of a ninja."

"I can and _will_ eat you," Blake stated flatly.

"At least take me to dinner first," Yang said in a teasing tone that Weiss didn't understand, a sly grin on her face. Obviously Blake wasn't _actually _going to eat her, but why did it have to be at dinner if she did?

Blake seemed to understand something Weiss didn't, though, because her eyes went wide and she blushed as red as Ruby's cloak before giving a strange, nervous titter.

She turned to look at Ruby and Weiss. "How's it going with you two?" she asked, wringing her fingers nervously.

"Done!" Ruby declared, slamming her hand down on paper like she'd just finished.

"Almost done," Weiss answered, frowning slightly. How had Ruby beaten her? "I'm having a little trouble with some of these questions."

"Oh!" Ruby exclaimed, flipping her sheet over. "Is it the one about what you'd do if there was a second Great War? Or the one about what you think should be done about the bandit tribes and White Fang?"

"No, those were easy. I don't know what my favorite tv show is."

"... What?" Ruby looked genuinely perplexed by this.

Weiss tilted her head to the side. "I don't watch tv, okay?... Do you think historical documentaries count?"

Yang's forehead smacked into the table with a dull thump.

Blake snorted at her partner's reaction, then turned to Weiss. "Relax. If you don't have an answer, then just skip it."

Leave an answer line blank? That felt… uncomfortable. Just the thought of it made Weiss feel like her brain was itching. But… she _didn't_ have an answer.

On the line, she penned out 'I don't have a favorite tv show.' (she had to answer in a complete sentence, of course) and showed it to Blake. Blake gave her a shrug of indifferent agreement.

"You ready?" Ruby asked, leg bouncing excitedly.

"Almost," Weiss answered. "A couple more." She reached over to lightly press down on Ruby's jittery knee, the girl's skin feeling incredibly warm to Weiss' cold hand. The bouncing stopped, but once again as soon as Weiss pulled her hand back the hyperactive jackhammer started up again.

Weiss sighed.

After she finished the last two questions on the trivial, irrelevant side, she nodded at Ruby. Ruby beamed happily and turned her chair ninety degrees to face Weiss. Not wanting to be a jerk, Weiss did the same. The table was a little small for four people, so they were sitting a bit close together and there wasn't much leg room when they were facing each other, and the problem was only exacerbated by the way Ruby stretched her legs out in front of her, heels on the ground under Weiss' chair and feet swinging back and forth so her and Weiss' calves were bumping together. Luckily, they were both wearing stockings, so there was no skin contact, but still… a little uncomfortable.

Ruby didn't seem to notice, eyes on the paper in her hands, and Weiss tried to dismiss her apprehension. While she might not find it normal, it was kind of nice that Ruby was comfortable enough around her for this casual contact to just feel natural, the way she was with Yang.

"'Kay!" Ruby chirped, "what's my favorite color?"

Oh wonderful. They were starting on _this _side.

"... Red?"

"Yep!" Ruby seemed incredibly please the Weiss had gotten that right, but she was fairly certain any random stranger off the street could guess that correctly just from looking at the girl. Grimm, Ruby was so red a _blind_ person could probably see it.

Ruby looked at her expectantly, her feet still swinging back and forth, knocking their legs together lightly.

"Oh, right." Weiss cleared her throat. "Ruby, what's my favorite color?"

"Blue!" Ruby exclaimed immediately.

When Weiss shook her head with a light smile, her face fell.

"It's not?" she asked, a slight pout on her face.

Weiss was now very tempted to change her answer, but she still shook her head tightly. "Nope."

"Is it white?" Ruby grumbled, looking bitter.

Weiss nodded. She liked the purity and symbolism and absoluteness of white. She also liked how it didn't carry an emotional connotations like most other colors-like how red could be seen as anger, blue as sadness, etc. She was partial to grey and black for the same reason, but she knew she looked far better in white than in grey, and black was a bit of a taboo color in Atlesian high society unless you were in mourning.

"Darn. That was my second guess. Sorry." Ruby frowned at the floor.

"Why on Remnant are you sorry?" Weiss asked, confused.

"'Cause I shoulda known that!" Ruby wailed. "You knew mine and I didn't know yours. I'm a sucky friend."

Weiss let out a choked, incredulous laugh. "Ruby! That's not-no. No you're not. It was a fifty-fifty guess and you got unlucky. I had to guess between red and black, but that was easier because you don't seem like the kind of person whose favorite color would be black."

Ruby grinned lightly at that, though her eyes still poured out disappointment. "Red and black _is_ the best looking color combo," she said quietly.

Weiss smiled. "It certainly is on you."

She didn't quite understand the blush that appeared on Ruby's cheeks.

"Thanks," Ruby squeaked. "So, um, anyway… What's my favorite food?!"

"Strawberries. Or cookies. Or strawberry cookies." That was easy.

Ruby smiled widely and turned her paper around and pointed to the line where she'd written her answer in her big, bubbly handwriting.

'Strawberries or cookies or strawberry cookies'

Weiss gave Ruby a small smile of her own, a fluttery satisfaction in her heart that her answer was so on point.

"And mine?" she asked.

"Uhhh… Prosho cranberry crusties?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "That's _still_ not what they're called, Ruby."

"But is that it?!" her partner pressed, excited.

"No."

"Aww…" Ruby's shoulders fell, and she had the non-exaggerated sad face that Weiss knew was a real one.

"Hey," she said, waiting until Ruby looked up at her to continue. "It's not your fault you didn't know. I've never said it. And I just know yours because it's come up a lot."

It didn't seem to help all that much. Ruby's lip twitched in a sad attempt at a smile, and she let out a tiny "Yeah, ok."

Weiss didn't know what she was supposed to do, how she was supposed to make Ruby feel better. She had a huge advantage here because Ruby was such an open book about this stuff, while Weiss was… Weiss.

Maybe she should work on being more open. At least with her team. At least with Ruby.

"Would you like to know what it is?" she asked.

"Yes please!" Ruby breathed, worry and relief warring on her face. Weiss didn't understand at all what was such a big deal about this.

"Have you had shrimp scampi before?" she asked.

Ruby's eyes widened in recognition. "Oh, yeah! That's the Eastern Vacuo dish with the shrimp and the skinny noodles, right?"

"Angel hair pasta, yes."

"Yeah, I've seen that on the menu at some restaurants before. Dad doesn't let us get shrimp, though."

"Why not?" That seemed like a strange rule. There was nothing wrong wi-

"Too expensive," Ruby answered with a shrug.

"Oh." Damn. Now that guilt was back, even though she hadn't done anything wrong. She hated this feeling.

"Okay okay okay," Ruby said, bouncing a little. "I bet you won't know this one. What's my favorite movie?"

Weiss gave a rueful smile. "I have no idea," she admitted. "I don't really know a whole lot of movies."

Ruby just smiled. "It's Revengers: Eternity War!" she said cheerily. "I really like Titanium Man. He's so cool."

That name rang a bell in Weiss' head. "Isn't he played by… what was his name, Bobert Frowney Junior?"

"Yeah!"

Weiss nodded. "I met him at the Gala."

Ruby's eyes bugged out. "REALLY?! That's so cool!"

Her sudden spike in volume made Weiss jump and caused others to turn their heads.

"What's so cool, Rubes?" Yang asked.

"Weiss knows Ti-hmffhmmfrrff!" she answered, Weiss clamping a hand over her mouth mid sentence. Ruby blinked at her, more surprised and amused at Weiss' reaction than offended or uncomfortable at the contact.

"Shush," Weiss said, her heart thumping wildly in panic. She didn't want the attention. She was fine with being in the spotlight, but she wanted it to be for _her_ accomplishments, not because she got an invitation to some pretentious event because of her last name.

"What's so cool, Weiss?" Yang asked again, switching the target of the question.

"Nothing!" Weiss quickly huffed. "Absolutely nothing about me is '_so cool_'." She flashed her eyes wider in a warning for Ruby before slowly pulling her hand away.

Despite her expectations, Ruby _didn't_ just blurt out what she'd been about to say before Weiss had silenced her. Instead, she stayed quiet, a small smile on as her eyes flitted about, taking in everything about Weiss' face.

Yang snickered. "You're the Ice Queen for a reason, Weiss. Everything you do is cool!"

"You do realize Weiss probably doesn't like that nickname, right?" Blake said quietly to her partner.

"What? It's _Weiss_. I bet she _loves_ being called a queen."

Weiss tuned the two of them out. She held Ruby's gaze for a long time, finding some sort of… not understanding, but maybe acceptance in those silver eyes.

"Pssst, Ruby!"

Ruby and Weiss both turned to the table situated behind theirs, where Team KORL was sitting. Orianna was leaning forward, a hand cupped to the side of her mouth like she was trying to block Weiss from hearing her.

"What's so cool?" she stage whispered.

Ruby smiled and glanced at her partner. "Nothing," she said. "Just Weiss being Weiss."

"That's cheesy as fuck," Karn declared flatly.

Ruby stuck her tongue out at him while Professor Goodwitch flew in from nowhere.

"Mister Ammolite! You will watch your language in my classroom!"

"Isn't this Professor Ozpin's classroom?" Remus asked, his falcon punctuating his question with a loud "_skreee!"_

"Are you sassing me, Mister Silver?"

"N-no, ma'am!"

"I thought not." She pointed her riding crop at Karn's nose, the giant boy crossing his eyes to look down at it. "Watch. Your. Language." She stalked off.

"You are pretty cool, though," Ruby said. Weiss turned to find her partner eyeing her with that strange intensity again. "Literally," Ruby clarified. She reached out slowly, like she was trying to pet wounded animal, and wrapped her hands around Weiss' fingers. She gave them a little waggle.

"You're so cold!" she exclaimed, giving a little smile that helped calm Weiss' nerves at the physical contact.

Weiss shrugged. "It's a Schnee thing, I guess. Maybe an Aura thing? My siblings and mother have always felt really cold to the touch too."

"Huh. Neat!" She pulled her hand back and refocused on the paper in her other one. "Next question… What's my favorite song?"

The back and forth went on for quite a while, each question sparking its own little tangent (that was largely led by Ruby). Weiss idly mused that Professor Ozpin succeeded in his goal of facilitating conversation between teammates.

Apparently Ruby's favorite song was called "This Will Be the Day". Her favorite book was a comic line (Weiss wasn't entirely sure what a 'line' of comics was, but she didn't care enough to ask) called "Fear the Reaper". Weiss had protested, saying comics weren't books, but Ruby had assured her that they are because they're called comic _books_. Weiss found she didn't have a good argument against that logic. Ruby's favorite possession was Crescent Rose, her favorite pastime was spending time with Yang-and now Weiss and Blake were included in that, which was nice.

When they were nearing the bottom of the front page, Professor Ozpin came back to their table, pulling a chair with him and settling down across from them. Weiss righted her seat to face him, and Ruby quickly did the same. Blake and Yang stopped whatever conversation they were having to give the headmaster their attention too.

"So, ladies. Has your game progressed to the back side of the assignment yet?" he asked, smiling lightly.

"Not yet, sir," Weiss asked. "We were just about to get there." She turned to look questioningly at Blake and Yang, and they both shook their heads.

"Ah," the professor said, interlacing his fingers and scooting his chair in. "Then I guess we'll get to all go through them first together."

Taking that prompt, the four girls turned their papers over.

"So, the first question. How does your semblance work? This is more for your benefit as a team than mine, so feel free to direct your answers to each other instead of me." Professor Ozpin leaned back and looked to Ruby, who cleared her throat.

"Ahem. Okay, so Yang knows this and I've told Weiss pretty much everything, so I guess this is for you, Blake."

Blake pursed her lips. "Well gee, thanks, Ruby. That just makes me feel all special inside." Her face was deadpan, and Weiss couldn't really tell if she was joking or not…

Apparently Ruby couldn't either, because her eyes went wide and she stammered guiltily, "N-no! I just-we haven't gotten to talk too much. I was just, uh, saving the best for last!"

Weiss turned and gave her partner a light, teasing frown that Ruby returned before looking back at Blake. Blake was glaring at Ruby, arms crossed, looking incredibly miffed… and then a smile crept on her face.

"I'm just kidding, Ruby. I know. Now come on, how's it work. All I can really see is you turn into and shed roses and go super fast."

Ruby smiled, relieved. "Yeah! So I kinda, like, poof over to another dimension where everything is red and stuff and I get faster and stuff like gravity doesn't affect me as much and then I run around and I can poof back over whenever I want and if I spend a lot of Aura I can, like, fly and stuff."

Blake blinked. Weiss rolled her eyes.

"She shunts herself into a parallel dimension," Weiss clarified. "She leaves behind an outline of herself made of her Aura, and that outline seems to function like a breach in reality, leaking rose petals from the other side. Why rose petals, I don't really know." She shrugged. "But while she's in that other dimension she's less constrained and affected by things in the physical world like gravity, friction, impacts, et cetera. Oh, and she can fly."

Blake blinked, then nodded slowly.

"Yeah, what she said!" Ruby chirped, giving Weiss a grateful, adorably sheepish grin.

"Can you run through walls?" Blake asked, finally speaking up.

Ruby's eyes widened in surprise. "What?! No. No, stuff is all still there. But I could, like, run _into_ the wall at full speed and it wouldn't really hurt. It would just feel like running into a wall through three layers of pillows."

"... Huh," Blake replied.

Ruby scratched her head. "Yeah… What about you, Weiss?"

Weiss cleared her throat and straightened up, side-eyeing Professor Ozpin to find him simply watching the exchange.

"So my semblance has two parts. The first is the glyphs you've all seen." She turned up a palm and summoned a grey glyph, letting it rotate slowly above her fingers. "By themselves, these glyphs can do three things: they all function as a barrier, while that's _all _the grey ones do; the white ones push, and the black ones pull. I can affect their size, distance, and strength through the amount of Aura I put into them and what I… _will_ them to be, I suppose. I can summon multiple glyphs at once, though each one takes mental effort and concentration, so it's easiest when I can arrange them in a pattern and their all the same type." She turned to Ruby. "Like that line of white glyphs I made for you up the cliff face against the Nevermore was pretty easy. It gets a _lot_ harder when I try to make different types of glyphs, especially white and black glyphs at the same time, or when I have to arrange them in abstract ways I haven't practiced and made muscle-mental-memory."

Her teammates all gave various nods or, in Ruby's case, excited smiles and goofy side to side wiggles to show they were following.

"Makes sense," Blake said. "What's the second part?"

Weiss shook her head. "There's more to the glyphs, first."

"What?" Yang blurted in disbelief.

It was hard for Weiss to hide her satisfaction at the surprised expressions on her teammates. She was pretty certain she failed, at least to some degree. "I can also use them to augment my casting with Dust," she explained. "I mostly use them with ice Dust because that's what I'm best with and it's easiest for me to connect the Dust to the glyphs with my Aura, but I've made explosions with fire Dust and gravity wells with grav Dust and some other things. Always in practice sessions, though. I've only used ice Dust with my glyphs out in the field."

"H-how do they 'augment' your casting?" Blake asked, eyes still wide.

Weiss tilted her head. "They change the source of the casting, so instead of me throwing an ice shard at a Grimm or releasing a wave of frost from my hand, I can have it come out of a glyph. It takes a bit of concentration, though, and a bit more Aura to make the connection. And if the connection fails for whatever reason, like me breaking concentration or not devoting enough Aura, it just fizzles out and does nothing."

"And I'm guess it take more Aura to connect to your glyphs with Dust you have less affinity with?" Blake asked, now clearly intrigued.

Weiss nodded.

Yang let out a low whistle. "Alright, that's pretty impressive." Weiss smiled at the compliment. "And what's part two?"

Weiss' smile fell. "Ah, well… You might not see it for a while, if ever." She hung her head.

"What do you mean?" Ruby asked, giving Weiss a reassuring rub on the shoulder.

Taking a deep breath, Weiss accepted that she had to expound on one of her greatest failings that she would have rather have kept between herself and Winter.

"I can also summon spirits of foes I've slain. Or at least, I _should_ be able to. I still haven't been able to do it, no matter how hard Winter's tried to teach me."

"Wait, what the… _what_?" Yang blurted out. "You can summon… spirits… That's so fucking random, what?"

"Language…" Professor Ozpin warned.

Yang frowned. "Sorry.. .That's so… _flippin'_ random. _What_?"

Weiss simply tilted her head again. "I don't know _why_ it's part of the Schnee semblance. But it is. Winter can summon Nevermores, entire flocks of Lessermores, a pack of Beowolves… tons of stuff. She told me a few months ago she's added a Goliath to her collection."

"Whoooa," breathed Ruby.

Weiss smiled tightly. "Yeah. 'Whoa' indeed. But I still have no idea how to do it. I can't figure out…" She sighed. "I just can't."

Ruby gave her shoulder another rub and waited for Weiss to meet her eyes before speaking. "I'm sure you'll get it, Weiss! Don't stress about it. You're awesome. And we'll do everything we can to help!"

Weiss smiled at that, grateful for Ruby's fountain of seemingly unending support. Of course, there was nothing she or anyone other than Winter could do to help her, and Winter had already tried everything she could. Weiss was just hopeless.

Still, it was a nice gesture, and Weiss knew it wasn't an empty one.

"Anyway, that's me. What about you, Blake?"

The raven-hair girl shifted uncomfortably as the focus switched to her. "Oh, well my semblance isn't all that much compared to yours. Or Ruby's. I, uh, I can dash or teleport short distances, and I leave a shadowy clone of myself behind when I do. It sometimes confuses enemies and buys me a second or two, but that's kinda it."

This time it was Yang that gave her partner a reassuring shoulder rub. "Blake, if video games have taught me one thing, it's that mobility is fuuu-freaking overpowered. I bet it's way more useful than your making it out to be."

Blake smiled at that, but then cast her head down, face screwing up in doubt.

"How does it work?" Weiss asked. She didn't know how to make Blake feel any better about her semblance, but maybe if she knew some of its mechanics she could offer some ideas.

Blake cleared her throat a bit. "Well, I can spend a little Aura to kind of… it feels like I _push_ myself out of my body, but I don't. I suppose I leave an outline of myself in Aura, kinda like you, Ruby."

The brunette smiled at that. "Neat!"

Blake nodded absently. "If I spend more Aura, I launch myself further. I guess one of the good things about my semblance is it's cheap, doesn't cost much Aura, so I can use it a lot. I _can_ spend a buttload of extra Aura to teleport, though I don't do it much because it's so costly, and I honestly couldn't explain how it works or feels…"

"Perhaps something you can explore now that you're here at Beacon," Professor Ozpin interjected, a reminder that he was there. Weiss had kind of forgotten.

Blake nodded.

"Can you use it while you're in mid-air?" Ruby asked.

"I-yes, I can, why?"

"Does that mean you can double jump?!"

Blake laughed at that. "Yes, I suppose I can. I can jump a lot, actually. It takes about a second for my semblance to… recharge, I suppose you could say."

"So you have a cooldown!" Yang said, eyes wide with excitement and wonder.

"Uh, yes, I suppose. It takes a bit longer to recharge-"

"Come off cooldown," Yang interrupted her.

Blake blinked. "Sure, what the heck. It takes a bit longer to… come off cooldown… if my shadow breaks, maybe half a second to a second. But it takes a _lot _longer to rech-_come off cooldown-_" Yang smiled widely "-if _I _get hit while I have a shadow out. I think it gets longer if I have more shadows out, but I'm not sure. I don't usually have more than one out anyway, 'cause I mostly use my semblance to dodge attacks, and that results in my shadow getting hit."

"Something else we can test!" Ruby chirped, getting a nod from both Blake and Professor Ozpin.

"But that's it," Blake said with a shrug. "It's not as versatile as Weiss' or as flat out powerful as Ruby's, but I get by okay. What about you, Yang?"

Yang snorted. "Oh, mine's pretty boring. Pretty strong, though. Whenever I get hit, I can store energy from the impact up, kinda like a battery. And whenever _I_ hit something, I can release it for extra oomph!" She mimed a punch on that last part.

Weiss frowned. "Any technicalities about it?"

Shrugging lightly, Yang answered. "A lil' bit. It seems like the lower my Aura gets the more energy I can store before it starts just kinda leaking out. And I can only hold on to that energy for a little bit before I have to start paying Aura to keep it there. The more the energy, the more Aura I gotta pay." She shrugged again. "It's kinda intuitive, though, and straightforward. I've never really had a problem figuring out how to use it." Her eyes flickered over to Weiss at that part, and then quickly looked away.

That stung, though Weiss did her best to hide it.

"Hmm…" Professor Ozpin joined in, rubbing his chin in thought. "You can store more energy when you're low on Aura, you say?"

Yang nodded.

"That makes me think that whatever that energy is, it's being stored in the same place your Aura is, competing for space."

With a scratch of her head, Yang nodded. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." It was obvious to Weiss that the girl didn't really think it was an important detail, but she found it fascinating. She would be willing to bet some scientists would _love_ to get readings on Yang, try to figure out what that "energy" is and where it goes to try to find the source of Aura.

"Interesting," the headmaster mused. "Well, unless any of you have any other questions for each other or things to add, we can move on to the next question." When all four girls looked at each other and then back at him with a shake of their heads, he nodded.

"Very well. We don't have to spend so much time on this one, but it will be good for you all to get a picture of how you each approach this. 'A pack of Beowolves stands in front of you. How do you approach the fight?'"

"Shotgun myself at them and punch them to death!" Yang cheered, far too happy and proud of her simplistic, barbaric answer.

Professor Ozpin smiled amusedly and turned to Blake.

"I, uh… Are we in a forest? Or a city? Or what?"

The headmaster shrugged. "Whatever you'd like. Whatever your ideal situation would be."

Eyebrows scrunching with thought, Blake nodded. "If we were in a forest, I'd try to lead them through the trees, jump up onto the branches to get a height advantage. Beowolves are bad at maneuvering in tight spaces, so I'd lead them to tight clusters of tree trunks and roots. They have too good a sense of smell to sneak up on them, so I'd focus on just picking off the ones around the side, make sure I don't get surrounded… Yeah."

Weiss smiled, pleased that Blake had put so much thought into her answer-_much_ more than Yang had.

Professor Ozpin smiled as well. "Very good, Miss Belladonna. And you, Weiss?"

"Ahem. I would focus on the same thing as Blake-not getting surrounded. I'd try to shape the battlefield with ice Dust, funnel them to me one at a time, take out the ones I could with casting from afar. If they manage to get too close, I'd launch myself away with some glyphs and do it again."

Ruby didn't even wait to be addressed before blurting out her answer. "I'd snipe at 'em as they run at me and then when they get to me I'd zoom around and cut 'em up with Crescent Rose!"

Weiss groaned and put her face in her hands as Ozpin chuckled.

"Well, it sounds like you four have a good balance of fighters that want to get in the fight and ones that want to stay around the edges. Make sure to plan accordingly when you're working with Professor Rustheart."

"Sir, yes sir!" Ruby chirped, giving a goofy thumbs up.

"Next, the difficult hypothetical. 'Your partner and a bus full of civilians are both in life threatening danger, and you only have time to save one of them. Who do you save?' Ruby, why don't you start us off?"

"Oh, uh…" Ruby scratched her head and fidgetted nervously. "This one's easy! I'd just use my super speed and save them both. Easy peasy." She grinned worriedly, clearly aware that answer wasn't going to cut it.

"You only have time to save _one_ of them, Ruby."

She pouted. "Even with my super speed?"

"Even with your super speed."

"Ugggh!" She slumped in her seat. It took her a long time to finally answer. "I guess… I guess I'd save the bus…"

Weiss made sure to keep her face impassive as she watched Ruby's skew up in anguish.

"I'm sorry, Weiss! But we gotta save the innocent peoples and also you're super awesome and powerful and I would be sure you would be able to protect yourself!"

Weiss shook her head. "It's okay, Ruby." It made sense. Ruby wanted to be a hero. She was obligated to save the bus full of innocents. And Weiss _was_ powerful and capable.

Ozpin smiled and nodded. "Remember, there is no _right_ answer here. I'm not expecting or wanting one answer over another. The point of this question is to help you figure out what you prioritize now, before you get in the field, so that you don't have to make the decision out there and risk being to slow to save _anyone_."

Ruby nodded at that, but didn't seem very consoled. She kept glancing guiltily at Weiss, wringing her hands together and bouncing her knee.

It hurt Weiss to see how distraught the girl was right now. She reached out and grabbed one of Ruby's hands, dragging it lower so she could press down on her knee as well. Ruby squeezed her hand back like it was a lifeline, giving her a hesitant smile and stilling her leg.

Better.

"And what about you, Weiss?" Professor Ozpin asked. "Who would you save?"

"Ruby."

"WHAT?!" Ruby legitimately shouted in her ear, making Weiss jump about a thousand feet into the air. Her hand started to go numb from how hard Ruby was now squeezing it.

"Really?" Yang added, her tone of voice making it clear she didn't believe it.

"You'd save _me_?" Ruby squeaked.

"Yes, Ruby," she answered simply.

"B-b-b-b-but _why_?!"

Weiss frowned, confused why this was such a big deal. "Ruby, you're training to be a huntress. You're dedicating your life to serving and protecting the people of Remnant. If I save a bus full of people that's, what, forty or fifty lives saved? Compared to the amount of people you would go on to save if I protect you instead?" She shrugged. "It just seems logical."

Ruby blinked.

"Ah, the utilitarian approach," Professor Ozpin remarked. "And you are comfortable with that? With assigning a value to people's lives?"

"When we have to deal with situations like this, that seems like the best way to approach it," Weiss answered. "Trying to deal with abstractions is impossible even in a classroom with a philosophically inclined professor around to lead the discussion."

Professor Ozpin narrowed his eyes and gave a suppressed smile. "I see. And what if someone in that bus is also a huntsman? Or a doctor that will find the cure for Grimm sickness if he lives? Someone who would arguably save more lives than your partner in the long run?"

Weiss had already considered this. She tilted her head in a shrug. "I can only work with known variables," she replied. She turned to Ruby, who was staring at her wide-eyed, some weird mix of guilt and concern and surprised etched onto her features.

"Ruby?"

"Yeah, Weiss?"

"Could you please stop crushing my hand?"

"Oh!" Ruby pulled away from Weiss' hand like it had burned her. "I'm sorry!" Immediately, her leg started its nervous bouncing again, and Weiss resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She reached out and snatched back one of Ruby's hands and pressed down on the girl's knee again.

"It's okay! Just relax and stop grinding my finger bones together."

Ruby let out a sad, apologetic whine. "Sorry," she said again.

"It's _okay_."

Finally, Ruby relaxed a bit, her hand and leg untensing, and she scooted her chair a little closer to Weiss. She then turned to Professor Ozpin. "Can I change my answer? I wanna save Weiss now."

The headmaster chuckled while Weiss rolled her eyes, fighting back a smile.

"You're welcome to change and modify your priorities as you see fit. Again, you're not being graded. This is just to help you figure out yourself and your teammates."

"Yeah, but I still want to save Weiss, for the record," Ruby insisted stubbornly.

"Shush," Weiss said, lightly slapping the back of Ruby's hand that she held. "What would you do, Blake?"

At the mention of her name, Blake shot Yang a quick glance before turning and addressing Professor Ozpin. "I would save the civilians," she stated, calm and confident.

Yang's lips pursed in a bit of a frown, but she quickly wiped it away, no one but Weiss any the wiser.

"And why is that?" Professor Ozpin asked.

"Because we're huntresses," Blake answered. "We've signed up to protect the people of Remnant, and part of that is accepting the dangers. We all know the risks, that we might die on any hunt, and we're all… well, maybe we're not ready for it, but we've made peace with it. At least… we should have." She glanced again at Yang, who was watching her with those soft lilac eyes. Blake continued, "Those civilians haven't made that peace. They probably didn't wake up that morning thinking they might die. They still have lives to live. It's our job to make sure they can."

Professor Ozpin nodded. "A good answer, though perhaps a touch… fatalistic."

Blake shrugged and looked down, her hair falling around her face and obscuring it from Yang's view.

"Still, a well thought-out answer," Professor Ozpin reasserted. "Where Weiss approached it from a logical standpoint, and Ruby a… an emotional one, you've approached it from the standpoint of the role huntsmen and huntresses serve in society."

Blake nodded slightly, her head still down. Ruby gave Weiss' hand another squeeze that Weiss wasn't sure how to interpret.

"And finally we come to Miss Xiao-Long." Professor Ozpin turned to her. "Who would you save?"

"Blake." She answered just as quickly and confidently as Blake had, though where Blake had avoided Yang's eyes after answering, Yang did the opposite, leaning forward slightly to try to glimpse Blake's face behind her curtain of hair.

Blake's eyes widened a bit at the answer, but she kept her head down and didn't give any other reaction.

"And why is that?" Professor Ozpin prompted.

Yang shrugged casually and leaned back. "I know Blake. I like her, from what I know about her so far. I'd be sadder if I let her die than some random people I don't know."

"That seems… selfish," Weiss interjected.

Yang didn't seem to care about that verdict. "Maybe. But maybe it's… I dunno. I don't deal with loss well. So…" She waved a hand towards Weiss. "I guess it's like your thing. I'd save more people and do more good overall if I kept Blake alive."

"A benefit, though not a factor in your decision…?" the headmaster said, trailing the statement into a question at the end.

Yang frowned. "No. Not really."

"Yang?" Ruby's tiny voice came. Everyone turned to her. "What do you mean you don't deal with loss well. You've always been…" She floundered as she tried to find the right word. Her eyes flickered across the people present that weren't her sister, like she wanted to say something but not in front of them. "... awesome," she finished quietly.

Yang smiled sadly and looked off to the side. "Yeah," she whispered, so quietly Weiss barely heard it, and she was certain Ruby hadn't.

"I might suggest that you try working that out, Miss Xiao-Long," the headmaster said. When Yang looked at him questioningly, he clarified, "The value you place on your emotional well-being and the lives of innocents."

Yang scowled darkly at that. "And Blake isn't an innocent?"

"I'm not," Blake whispered to the tabletop.

Yang turned to her. "What was that, Blakey-Blake? Sorry, I didn't hear you."

Blake sighed, cringing, and turned to meet Weiss' eyes and shake her head almost imperceptibly. The message was clear: leave it alone.

Professor Ozpin seemed to want to steer the conversation away from this emotionally charged moment, though. He cleared his throat. "Well, this is a question that's good for you all to think about. And you can swap other people out for your partner in this hypothetical and see if and how your answer changes. But we're getting close to the end of class here, so I want to skip down to this question that I _would_ like to know the answer to: 'What is one equipment or modification you would like to enhance your fighting style?'"

Ruby bounced up and down excitedly, though she still kept a firm-but gentle-hold on Weiss' hand. "Ooh, ooh! Pick me first! I wanna go first!"

"Ahem. Ruby, why don't you go first?" Professor Ozpin said with a poorly concealed smile.

"Yes! Okay, so there are a bunch of things that would be really good. I was thinking maybe some boots with grav Dust enhancements so I could run _even faster_ and jump _even higher_, 'cause that would be cool!" She looked at her teammates, and it took Weiss a moment to realize the girl was looking for confirmation.

"Yes, very cool," she said.

Ruby's beaming grin widened. "Yeah! Also, it would be really nice to just get some exosuit gauntlet things that could enhance my strength a bit, 'cause Crescent Rose is kinda heavy."

"Or you could just actually _do_ the upper body stuff when you work out with me, Rubes," Yang said, the teasing way she pressed her lips together making it clear she didn't expect Ruby to agree.

"Ugh, but that's gross and hard, Yang," Ruby protested.

"That's how you know it's making you stronger, doofus."

Ruby scowled adorably. "Yeah, or I could just make super gloves! An-y-way, yeah, there's that. Also, some better steel for Crescent Rose's blade would be great, 'cause then I'd have room to add Dust ports and have, like, a flame blade or a wind slash or lightning sweep or who _knows_ what else! I wonder what putting gravity Dust on a blade would do…"

"Noted," Professor Ozpin said, though Weiss noticed he didn't have anything to write on. He probably had a decent memory though, hopefully enough to handle all of Ruby's word vomit. "Anything else?"

Ruby shook her head. "Those are the biggest single things I could think of."

The professor nodded. "And you, Weiss?"

Weiss tilted her head to shrug. "I couldn't think of anything."

"What?!" Ruby squawked. "But you need a gun! You're the only huntress _ever_ whose weapon isn't also a gun!"

"I am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

Professor Ozpin chuckled. "She is most certainly not the only one. This whole 'my sword is also a gun' thing seems to be a generational fad."

Ruby crossed her arms defiantly. "Uncle Qrow's weapon turns into a gun!"

The headmaster smiled. "He added that feature much later, after he started teaching at Signal."

Ruby's eyes went wide in surprise. "Really?"

"Of course. That's why its pistol form looks so…"

"Goofy?" Yang supplied.

The professor tilted his head, not confirming or denying the description.

"Oh," Ruby said, deflating a bit. "Well, you still need a gun, Weiss. Maybe just, like, a little revolver that fits thematically with Myrtenaster-like how General Ironbro uses!" Professor Ozpin raised his eyebrows at the nickname, but Ruby didn't notice because her excitement was rebuilding. "And you can modify it to fire Dust rounds so you can do your super awesome magic stuff and make everything go pssheww!" She mimed an explosion. "Oh! _Or_ you could get a gauntlet for your off hand with hard-light Dust so you can create a shield whenever you need it, so you can run around like an epic knight with a sword and shield!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Ruby, my sword is a rapier. The fighting style for a rapier doesn't work with a shield."

"Yeah, well then you can just make your _own_ fighting style, _duh_!"

"Well, think on it, Weiss," Professor Ozpin said. "If you decide you like one of those ideas, or come up with another, let me know and we can look at getting something set up next semester."

Weiss shook her head. "Thank you, sir, but it's okay. I can more than afford it myself."

That gave Professor Ozpin pause. "True enough. Though just know that we do have a small budget devoted to equipping each student, should you decide to make use of it."

"Ooh!" Yang perked up. "How big is it?"

"I'm not at liberty to say, unfortunately."

"Aw."

Weiss smiled. "It's fine, Yang. Your budget is my fortune, so don't worry about it."

Yang looked like she was about to protest-Weiss still didn't understand Yang's refusal to accept her money-but Ruby let out a little "heeeee" of happiness and hugged Weiss' side, releasing her hand in the process.

"You're the best, Weiss!"

Stiffly, Weiss reached up and patted Ruby's head where it rested on her shoulder. "Yes, I am, aren't I? Now get off of me, I need to breathe periodically."

Ruby giggled and pulled away, flashing her another beaming smile.

"Well if Weiss will be funding your team, this is a bit superfluous," Ozpin said, partly to himself, "though for my own sake I'd still like to get _your_ answers, Miss Belladonna and Xiao-Long."

Blake fidgetted, finally pulling her hair back again so Yang could see her face. "Well, I'm not really sure. The best thing I could think of would be simple, just modifying Gambol Shroud to shoot Dust rounds. Maybe if my semblance works with Dust then I could add something to my sheath or something so I could have Dust stored there. I don't know, really."

The professor nodded, and Weiss quickly clamped a hand over Ruby's mouth when she opened it to blurt out what Weiss presumed was more excited nonsense. Ruby pouted at her under her hand, but stayed quiet.

"And you, Miss Xiao-Long?"

Yang rolled her shoulders. "I thi-wait, could you just call me Yang? 'Miss Xiao-Long' makes me feel old as fuu-heck."

Professor Ozpin nodded.

"And I'm just Blake, please," Blake poked in.

"Very well. And what would you like, Yang?"

"I was thinking armor of some sort, 'cause I talked to Weiss last night and came to the conclusion that I'm gonna be the team's tank, so I kinda want some protection. _But_ at the same time, I get stronger when I get low on Aura, in a way, so I dunno. There's a weird dynamic where I _want _to take damage up to a certain point, but then any more damage doesn't really help because I'm probably not going to cap out on my semblance's energy when its max gets high. But I don't know how to get armor that only works after I take some hits." She shrugged.

Ruby reached up and gently pulled Weiss' hand down from her mouth, giving Weiss a questioning look like she wanted permission to speak.

Weiss gave her a nod.

"You could do, like, a hard-light armor thing that you can turn on and off?" she offered.

"You and your hard-light shenanigans," Blake muttered.

"Hey, it's really cool and awesome, okay?" Ruby protested. "And apparently it can be made into whatever you want. So hmph!" She stuck her tongue out.

"Is that a thing?" Yang asked, directing her question at Weiss. "A personalized hard-light armor set?"

Weiss shook her head slowly. "I don't think so, not yet. The 'shields' I talked about before were big bubble force fields that were too big to be feasibly applied to anything other than mechs. But maybe… I don't know. A lot of research is being done into the tech. And huntsmen have been doing their own experimenting and developing into it. That's where some of the better weapon projection designs have come from."

"Oh really?" Yang asked, straightening up a bit.

"Yes. And if you develop something really good, you can patent the code and sell the rights to the SDC-or some other companies too, I suppose-for a lot of money."

"Neat!" Yang exclaimed, clearly excited by the prospect. That only served to frustrate Weiss more, though. Why did Yang have such a problem accepting gifts from Weiss, but she had no inhibitions about getting paid by Schnee Dust for a string of code?

Whatever. If Weiss couldn't understand it, that was probably because it wasn't understandable. Knowing Yang, her reasons probably weren't rooted in something sensible, like rational logic.

"Okay." Professor Ozpin clapped his hands together. "It sounds like you four have a little bit more figuring out to do about this. Please let me or the other professor know if you decide on something, even if Weiss pays the bill. We still have resources and knowledge for you to make at your disposal."

"Thank you, sir," Weiss said, quickly echoed by her teammates.

"In the meantime, I encourage you to discuss the rest of these questions with each other, and if you'd like, you can always stop by my office and discuss them with me as well." He stood from his chair. "I'm going to go check with the other groups, but class is over. I hope you ladies have a lovely day. See you tomorrow."

"Bye, Professor!" Ruby chirped as she jumped from her seat. "Come on, Team RWBY! Iiiiiii'm hungry!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and followed her partner out of the classroom.

"So, Ruby," she said once the four of them were out in the hallway.

"So, Weiss," Ruby replied with a grin, adding an extra _hiss_ to the end of her name.

"Those ideas that you had…"

Ruby perked up. "Yeah?"

"A couple of them will take some work, but I can get you some high quality steel for Crescent Rose pretty easily if you'd like."

The smile she got in return made her decide she'd throw whatever amount of money out the window it took to help Ruby with this project. "Weiss, that would be awesome! Ooh, I should call Uncle Qrow and ask him to come help me with it!"

She pulled out her scroll, and Weiss quickly yanked her arm down. "Relax, Ruby. I haven't even bought it, yet. Let's figure out exactly what you need, first, then you can work out the rest."

Ruby nodded, completely undeterred. "For sure! Uncle Qrow's weapon is ten sixty carbon steel, but he doesn't fold and unfold his as much as I do. I'm pretty sure fifty-one sixty-six or maybe ninety-two sixty spring steel would be best."

Weiss blinked. She had definitely not been expecting _that_ answer. She didn't even know what it meant.

It was a strange feeling, to find a subject where Ruby had more knowledge than Weiss. It made her feel itchy, but also… impressed. It was almost gratifying that there was a knowledgeable, intellectual side of Ruby for her to relate to.

She liked it.

With a smile, she said, "Sounds like you already know. We can look at ordering something when we get back to the room, yeah?"

Instead of responding with words, Ruby through her arms around Weiss' waist and lifted her a couple inches in the air.

"You're awesome, Weiss!"

"Eep!"

"Careful, Ruby," Blake's voice said from behind them. "She needs to breathe periodically, remember?"

Ruby set her down, and Weiss turned to see Blake and Yang walking shoulder to shoulder. "Thanks," she said to Blake, rubbing her lower rib where Ruby's wrists had dug into her.

"That class sucked," Yang griped, changing the conversation instantly. Clearly something had bothered her. Weiss wasn't sure how well she could help resolve it.

Apparently she didn't need to, though.

Ruby rushed to her sister's side and gave another hug, though when she tried to lift Yang off the ground she failed miserably.

"Grr," she grumbled, giving up. She looked up at Yang. "You okay?"

Yang gave a small, forced smile and put an arm around Ruby. "Yeah, Pipsqueak. I'm alright. Ready to see you rock some rocket boots."

"Me too!" Ruby agreed happily. From where she was at Yang's side, she couldn't see her sister's smile falter. She launched into an enthused rant about what her "rocket boots" would be like.

When Yang met her eyes, Weiss gave the girl a questioning frown, but Yang just shook her head.

Weiss gave a small nod. This she understood. A lot about Yang didn't make sense to her, but putting on a brave face? _That_ she got. She didn't understand why Yang was hiding herself from Ruby-it was entirely backwards from Weiss' experience, where she put on a false smile for everyone _but_ her sister-but she'd at least wait to ask her about it in private.

That decision surprised her. She'd decided to talk to Yang about it later so easily, almost in passing, when she hadn't even consciously decided she _cared_ enough to ask in the first place.

'_How the Crucible did _that _happen?'_ she wondered to herself.

Her introspection was interrupted as her name came up in Ruby's blather about her boots.

"... not really sure how that would work. But if it did, it would be soooooo cool!"

"I'm sorry, Ruby, what did you say?" Weiss asked. She'd missed too much to piece anything together.

"I said I might need your help figuring out how to make the gravity Dust in the boots work, 'cause you know Dust way more than me."

"Oh, right. Sure."

Ruby skipped a step. "Sweet! And I was wondering: _do _you know what happens if I apply gravity dust to Crescent Rose's blade? 'Cause I'm really curious to find out but I don't want to, like, implode my weapon or something."

"I have no idea, sorry."

"Durn. Oh well. Hey, Blake! Do you think…"

Ruby jabbered on, and eventually Yang's smile came back in full. Blake, it seemed, was similarly uplifted. Whatever funk she'd fallen into after saying she wasn't into was worn away by Ruby's effusive bubbliness.

Weiss still wanted to know more about that, too, but now wasn't the time. Now was the time for crappy cafeteria food and enjoying Ruby's happy banter. Plus, hopefully _some_ of these ridiculous ideas might be something feasible they could use to get stronger.

She fell in step beside Blake and enjoyed the moment with her team.


	14. Seeding 1-14

**Hey all! Welcome to my first fight scene!... x2! **

**Let me know what you guys think of it. It was fun to write, hopefully it'll be fun to read. Also, obligatory reminder that this was up on my website, writingbyjace .com , yesterday! A whole day earlier! Such early, much wow! (seriously, though, it's better :3)**

* * *

Ruby stretched her neck out side-to-side before unclipping Crescent Rose from her back, letting it hang by her side in its compact form.

Over by the shooting booth, the same one where Weiss and Ruby had shot each other repeatedly the other day, Weiss was skimming through that mysterious page in her notebook that she'd written in all last night and refused to show anybody. She closed it with a snap and walked-no, marched, really-out into the open space across from Ruby, flexing her fingers.

"Alright!" Professor Awesome announced with a clap of his hands. "I want a good, clean fight. No biting, hair pulling, toe-stubbing, blah blah blah. Fight's down to thirty percent aura or first to yield. Don't hit hard enough to cause a flicker, 'cause that's mean. You two ready?"

Ruby glanced over at the super teacher, who was standing on the other side of the shooting booths with Yang and Blake.

"Yep!" she chirped.

"Yes sir," Weiss replied formally.

With a smile, Ruby looked at her partner, who was… really intense. She was watching Ruby with a calculated look, being super duper serious. Doubt started to creep into the back of Ruby's mind. She had thought this was going to be a fun chance to show off some cool moves and have a sweet fight with her partner, but… Weiss looked like she wanted to _win_.

"Then get ready…"

Ruby quickly tried to shift mental gears. This was a _fight_ fight. What should she do? How was she supposed to beat _Weiss_? Her glyphs were like super magic and she could probably do some silly nonsense to one shot Ruby as soon as the fight started…. She hadn't _mentioned_ something like that yesterday, but maybe she'd been planning on showing off a super cool Surprise Attack glyph today….

"Get set…"

Ruby pushed a tiny bit of aura into Crescent Rose, flipping the white Dust switch that would trigger the transformation. With a series of loud, super cool sounding clanks and whirs, the scythe unfolded. Once it was fully in Scythe Mode, she slammed it into the ground, a satisfying _crack!_ sounding as it chunked into the dirt.

Weiss' eyes flashed ever-so-slightly weirder at Crescent Rose's transformation, and Ruby smiled. Yeah, her weapon was _really _awesome. Intimidating as heck. It even spooked Weiss.

In response, Weiss drew her sword-the super skinny blade barely even visible from where Ruby stood twenty feet away. It was a strange motion because Weiss was left handed and had her weapon sheathed on her left hip. She kind of tipped the point up behind her and then pulled _down_, her forearm facing outwards because she was holding it backwards. There was a tiny _click click click _sound as she cycled through the Dust vials in the rotatey revolver bit. She stepped into the same stance she'd used back in the forest, feet shoulder width apart and perpendicular.

_'Crap, what's my plan?!'_

"Fight!"

Ruby started walking to the side, thinking they'd do that thing in the movies where the fighters circle each other and wait for the other guy to make a move.

_Ssshring!_

Weiss _launched_ herself forward with a glyph, flying right towards Ruby, Myrtenaster's pointed aimed to hit Ruby in the chest.

Ruby wasn't expecting that at _all_. Weiss didn't seem like the type to be the all-out aggressor as soon as the fight started.

The point of the rapier crashed into Ruby's chest and she went stumbling back, both from the impact and the surprise. She felt the heavy whoosh of her aura leaving her, like her muscles building up lactate acid or whatever it was called even though she hadn't done any exercise.

"Ack!" Ruby squacked.

She dropped low, bending her knees and pushing herself to the side, slipping into her Rose Form. She needed to get away, get space, figure out what to-

A wall of ice sprung up in her path, flat, crystalline growths of cold-given-form erupting into existence to tower a foot over her head and at least a Yang-and-a-half to either side. She slammed into it with an "oof!" that was inaudible to the world. It stopped her movement and forced her out of the Rose Dimension, because it was _really _hard to stay still and stay in there.

_'Crap.'_

She felt more than she saw or heard Weiss appear behind her. She lashed backwards with Crescent Rose, dashing away at the same time. Her blade didn't connect with Weiss, though it did slam into the wall of ice and drag across its base as Ruby moved away.

She turned to find Weiss ten feet away, at the other end of the conjured barrier. A series of loud cracks precipitated the collapse of the half of the wall Ruby's scythe had cut through, shards of ice falling into the space between the two fighters. The spray of frost that erupted into the air made her lose sight of Weiss.

_'Crap.'_

She needed to keep moving.

Before she could even pick a direction, she caught sight of her opponent again. Weiss rose into the air behind the cloud of crystallized air, her ponytail flapping from the rush of wind. When she reached the top of her arc, she paused in the air. She raised her empty hand, fingers bent like a claw, like she was casting a sp-

Yep. Four glowing, spinning white glyphs appeared mid-air, two on either side of her.

_'Dang, she's so pretty and cool,'_ Ruby thought in the brief moment her partner hung in the air and the glyphs charged up for whatever the heck it was they were doing.

The glyphs turned a light shade of blue, and there was a similar glow from the revolvey thing in Weiss' sword. Ruby realized what was happening just in time.

She jumped up into the air as four giant knives of ice speared toward her, impaling the ground where she'd just been.

She was airborne now, and maybe that was something she could work with. When Weiss summoned a grey glyph underneath her to stand in the air, Rubby pulled the lever on Crescent Rose to switch the feed to the gravity round magazine, then let out a shot at Weiss to get rid of the normal bullet still in the chamber.

Weiss blocked the shot with a swish of her sword.

_'Daaaaaaaang, that was cool.'_

Ruby turned her weapon down and pulled the trigger again, the gravity round serving to launch her _way_ up in the air, over Weiss' head. Maybe she'd be able to outmaneuver Weiss in the air with her semblance, force her off her platforms.

She popped into the Rose dimension and propelled herself to the side as two geysers of water erupted from two dark blue glyphs that appeared underneath and beside her.

Gravity being so weak on her in this form meant she didn't have to spend much aura to stay airborne, only really needing to spend it to push forward. She looped around Weiss and waited until the girl sent another Dust attack, a diagonal wave of water that swooped from the blade of her sword with a broad swing.

With a burst of effort to change direction, Ruby zoomed straight at Weiss, avoiding the water. Weiss had tried to lead the target to intercept Ruby, so Ruby switching to move straight at her made it ineffective, and Weiss was still winding down from launching the attack.

Ruby trailed to a spot in front of and above her opponent and deactivated her semblance. As gravity took a stronger hold of her again, her speed and direction changed again, and Weiss wasn't ready for it.

Ruby came hurtling down on her with a massive overhead swing. The princess let out a gasp and threw herself off the glyph she stood on, creating another one a little ways away to land on, though she didn't move quite fast enough. Crescent Rose' blade clipped her calf before shattering the glyph she'd been standing on, and Weiss let out a tiny shriek as she was knocked off course. She crashed into the side of the new glyph with her stomach, bending almost ninety degrees at the impact before plummeting toward the ground fifteen feet below her.

_'Crap!'_

Ruby slipped back into her semblance and trailed down after Weiss to catch her, but it turned out she didn't need to.

Two clicks rang out as Weiss switched Dusts, and then a light green glyph appeared down on the ground and a pillar of air rushed up, slowing Weiss' fall. She landed awkwardly still, having to drop into a roll when she couldn't find her balance.

Ruby did a three-point hero landing, Crescent Rose's long handle at a diagonal behind her back like a total bad-A, a bit away from and behind her partner.

"You okay?" she called out.

Weiss, head still down, swung her sword blindly behind her, a dozen tiny ice daggers appearing in its wake and flying in Ruby's direction. Ruby was in Battle Mode now, so she was ready to react quickly. She smacked aside the two daggers that were actually going to hit her with the broad back of Crescent Rose's blade.

_'Right. This is a _fight_ fight.'_

When Weiss rushed at her, Ruby met her blade with her own. They traded back and forth, Ruby's wide swings and slashes countered by Weiss' parries and stabs.

Swing. Sweep. Jump, kick. Backstep, block. Backstep, dodge. Dodge, dodge, dodge.

It wasn't going in Ruby's favor.

Weiss kept pressing _in_, getting inside the reach of Crescent Rose, too close for Ruby to make proper use of the weapon. When Ruby used a burst of her semblance to try to get some space, she ended up slamming into a giant white glyph as large as a doorway, too wide to go around. It sent her back into the physical world and reeling back into Weiss, who swept Ruby off her feet with a swing of her sword and a graceful spin.

Knowing that landing on the ground with a straight up cryomancer two feet away from her was a bad idea, Ruby pulled the trigger on Crescent Rose. The gravity round sent her tumbling off to the right.

Sure enough, the spot she'd just vacated was encased in spears of ice with a _shringgg! _

_'That was close.'_

Ruby planted the blunt end of Crescent Rose, where the barrel opened, into the ground as she rolled, and her momentum carried her up into a sort of pole vault. When the snath was completely vertical, she pulled the trigger, launching herself backwards into the air just in time to dodge the newest attack.

Weiss had summoned another giant white glyph behind the cage of ice spears, and she must have done some dusty magic crap because the spears shattered apart, the shards of ice hurtling underneath Ruby as she spun in the air.

Before she could stabilize or even breathe, Weiss launched herself at Ruby in the air, the point of Myrtenaster once again aimed to skewer Ruby through the middle. Ruby batted the sword aside with the flat of Crescent Rose's blade, then they traded a quick one-two-three of blows in the air. The engagement broke when Ruby landed a kick into Weiss' side, pushing the girl away and herself into the ground.

She landed hard on her back, hard enough that it damaged her aura a bit. With a flex of her abs, she flipped herself up on her back, right when Myrtenaster stabbed into the ground where she'd been…

And pinned her cloak to the ground.

_'Frickety frack.'_

"Ha!" exclaimed Weiss, standing over her.

Ruby tried to look up at her partner, though it was awkward because she was down on one knee and couldn't stand up because her cloak was pulled over her head and pinned down in front of her.

Weiss blinked. She seemed to realize she couldn't do anything to _hit _Ruby with her sword in the ground.

"Uh…" Ruby said, the noise sounding slightly strained due to her scrunched positioning. She swung Crescent Rose up clunkily at her partner, though the blade was facing the wrong way so she didn't expect it to do much other than hopefully knock Weiss b-

Nope.

Weiss kicked down at Crescent Rose with a pretty high heel, and Ruby's awkward grip meant it got sent spinning into the dirt.

_That_ was embarrassing. In a hypothetical "who would win?: Crescent Rose or one dainty shoe", Ruby didn't expect the _footwear_ to win.

With a growl, Ruby reached up and unclipped the cross-shaped pins-gifts from Uncle Qrow-that bound her cloak to her shoulders.

The cloak no longer inhibiting her movement, she stood up and crouched low.

She and Weiss stared at each other for a moment, then looked at their weapons on the ground, then back at each other.

"Uh…" Ruby said again.

And then, in a flash of movement, Weiss _slapped _her.

It wasn't very hard slap, but the surprise of it still made Ruby's chin yank to the side.

Weiss' eyes widened, like she was surprised too. She blinked.

Ruby blinked.

Weiss flashed her a nervous, guilty grin that looked suspiciously… Ruby-ish.

"Why, you little!" Ruby growled, throwing herself forward to tackle her partner

"Aaah!" Weiss yelped as she got dragged to the ground.

They both fell into the dirt, and Ruby giggled a bit at Weiss' little noise of surprise while she crawled up to sit on top of Weiss' torso.

"Ruby, get off-!"

Ruby and Weiss both started slapping at each other, neither really trying to hit anything other than each other's hands. While Weiss let out incredulous noises of protest, Ruby just giggled.

"Ruby, you-ow!-absolute dolt! Get. Off!"

Weiss pulled her left hand back and made a petite-fingered claw out of it. For the briefest of moments, Ruby thought Weiss was about to scratch her face (which probably wouldn't do too much with her aura being, like, a _thing_). Then she heard a now familiar, high-pitched hum.

_'Uh-oh.'_

The glyph Weiss had summoned behind her sent Ruby flying away with a loud "Eeeep!" She managed to keep herself oriented, though, and when she hit the ground again she fell into quick roll, ending in a crouch and turning.

Weiss was rushing toward her weapon.

Ruby figured she should do the same.

Weiss was much closer to Myrtenaster than Ruby was to Crescent Rose, but Ruby's awesome super speed semblance meant the two of them both got rearmed and into fighting positions at the same time.

Ruby thought this would be an ideal moment for another brief, cinematic pause for them to look at each other, but Weiss had other ideas. She blitzed forward and launched into a devastatingly fast combo of slashes and thrusts

Weiss was so _fast_. She might not be able to keep up with Ruby in a foot race, but her attacks were just too quick for Ruby to keep up with, which was a distractingly weird feeling that definitely _wasn't_ helping.

It didn't help that Crescent Rose was so poorly suited for this kind of fight-not that it was bad in any way! Crescent Rose was perfect! But it was definitely not at its best in this close, one on one fight with another huntress, too heavy and large to effectively trade blows with a compact weapon like Myrtenaster. It excelled at giant, sweeping attacks that wiped out entire clusters of big dumb Grimm at once, not… this.

Swing. Block. Dodge. Ow! Spin. Double butterfly. Duck. Ow, sweep. Ow. Ow! OW!

Weiss kept landing hits on her-though luckily the individual strikes didn't do _too_ much damage. The last one, though, was a full on stab to Ruby's stomach that landed squarely, chunking out her aura and causing her to stumble back.

She couldn't take much more of this.

It _felt _like she was below half her aura now, though she couldn't be sure. She silently lamented the fact that she hadn't been able to figure out how to install the myAura sync bar on Crescent Rose so she'd be able to track how beat up she was on her weapon instead of needing to pull out her scroll, which Weiss certainly wasn't going to give her the time to do.

After a brief moment for them both to catch their breath, Weiss and Ruby dove back at each other again. This time, Ruby focused more on pushing herself further with each step, trying to get just a _little _bit more space for full swings. It seemed to work.

Weiss started landing less hits, and Ruby realized that the two of them had fallen into a bit of a rhythm. One-two, one-two, one-two-three; trading back and forth in a strange, asymmetrical dance. Ruby, with her wide, sweeping attacks that were clear and bold from Crescent Rose's massive blade, was a stark difference from Weiss' calculated, precise strikes, the thrusts and stabs of the skinny sword difficult to track with the naked eye.

Ruby was gaining a bit of momentum, though, as Weiss was starting to tire from parrying the heavy hits from Crescent Rose. Ruby started to gain ground, and she realized she was pushing Weiss towards the ruins of the wall of ice from earlier.

Was that a good thing? It might surprise Weiss and trip her up, make her slip, but it might also give her another avenue of attack-Ruby knew a caster's influence over a Dust summoned element greatly diminished once it was out in the world and the Dust was expended, but there was still _some_ level of influence.

That thought cause another to pop into Ruby's head. _'Why did Weiss stop using Dust?'_

She jumped to the side to avoid a slash.

Ruby was keeping up in the fight much better now that Weiss wasn't taking advantage of her incredible skill with Dust casting. Why was Weiss… letting her?

She knocked aside a stab, then followed up with an upwards spin of her scythe that forced Weiss back.

Maybe Weiss was trying to lull her into a false sense of security? Catch her off guard with a Dust attack when Ruby had forgotten about the threat?

Noooooooo way. Ruby was way too smart for that.

She dashed forward and planted her feet, throwing her strength into a swing that Weiss caught on Myrtenaster and forced the blade of Crescent Rose to sail over her head with a guiding push, then lunged forward to stab Ruby.

Ruby was ready for it. She stepped back, twisting Crescent Rose so she could hook Weiss from behi-

"Aack!" Ruby shouted out, as she tipped back, her right foot stuck to the ground. Her ankle twisted painfully, and she let herself fall onto her side instead of trying to continue her backward dash.

She hit the ground, slamming her elbow into the dirt with a painful thud, and raised Crescent Rose to try to block whatever-

Nope.

A white glyph appeared underneath her weapon's blade and it spun out of her hands.

Ruby tried to get up to run away, but…

_'WHY can't I move my foot?!'_

Her leg was twisted uncomfortably, her foot forced to stay straight while she was laying partially on her side. The foot itself was starting to slip out of her boot, but the boot itself felt like it was glued to the gr-

_'Oh.'_

There was a still, black glyph underneath Ruby's right foot, keeping it attached to the ground.

The shining point of a needle-like blade came into view, coming to a stop a couple inches from Ruby's neck.

"Yield," Weiss' imperious, slightly smug voice commanded.

Ruby looked up. Weiss' expression was the calm, emotionless mask, but it looked like her eyes were happily twinkling. Although maybe that was just Ruby's wishful thinking. Either way, she was beaten.

She raised her hands in surrender, adding in some sad puppy-dog eyes for effect.

Weiss' smile spread to her lips, and she reached a hand down to Ruby.

Ruby accepted it, letting herself get pulled to her feet as Weiss cut off the glyph that had tripped her.

"That was a good fight," Weiss said, her eyes leaving Ruby's to inspect her weapon.

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed readily. "That was so much fun! And you were so fast! And your Dust casting was so sweet, I wish I could do that! And hmmffr-"

Weiss reached up and covered Ruby's mouth with her hand.

"Shush," she said lightly. "Postpone the ramble for a couple minutes and go pick up your stuff."

Ruby noted that Weiss told her to _postpone_ the ramble, not skip it. So she still wanted Ruby to ramble! That was pretty cool, 'cause Ruby liked rambling.

"Okay!"

She skipped over to pick up Crescent Rose, then retrieved her cloak. It took a couple seconds to find and pick up the pins for it, but soon Ruby was walking back over to Weiss with her weapon holstered on her back and her cloak hanging from her shoulders, sporting a new Myrtenaster-sized hole along the edge that Ruby would treasure forever.

"That was so sweet!" she cheered to her partner, resuming her ramble. "You can just, like, _stand_ in midair and look all wizard-princessy! And you stabby stab so fast! You just kept throwing yourself at me and I didn't know what to do and I _really _wasn't expecting it and…"

As Ruby talked, she walked beside Weiss, who led them over to Professor Awesome and their teammates. The professor was standing with his arms crossed, looking thoughtful, while Yang and Blake talked to each other and laughed about something.

She pulled out her scroll to see exactly how much aura she had left.

Thirty-nine percent. Yikes. There was almost no point in her yielding. One more jab woulda done it.

"How much aura you got left?" she asked Weiss, curious how well she did.

Weiss checked her scroll. "Sixty-five."

"Whaaaaaa?" Ruby whined. "I only did… thirty-five percent to you?" That _sucked_.

"Less," Weiss replied with a cocky grin. "I spent a lot on my glyphs and Dust casting."

"Hnnnngh," groaned Ruby.

She quieted down as they reached the others.

"That was a good fight," Professor Awesome said, echoing Weiss. Ruby and Weiss both smiled proudly.

"Yeah," Yang agreed. "That was a good… catfight!"

Blake let out a snort that morphed into a full on laugh part way through the noise, and the professor was clearly biting down on the insides of his lips to stop from laughing himself.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Weiss demanded, putting a hand on her hips.

Ruby crossed her arms and angry pouted. "Yeah! What's that supposed to mean?"

Yang let out a little giggle. "That little… slappy bit you two did there…" She and Blake mimed out the hand slapping Ruby and Weiss had resorted to when they were deweaponized.

"Yeah…" Professor Awesome sighed. "That was a little… curious."

"What were we _supposed _to do?" Weiss asked, turning the palm of the hand not on her hip up in the air in a _very_ princessy 'what?' pose.

"You realize you can, like, make a fist-" Professor Awesome made a fist, then mimed a punch "-and _actually _hit each other, right?"

"I don't want to punch Ruby!" Weiss protested.

"Yeah! Me neither!" Ruby agreed. She then realized it probably sounded like she was saying she didn't want to punch _herself_, when she meant she didn't want to punch Weiss. She moved on, hoping her intent was obvious. "Punching is mean!" She shot Yang a playful glare as she said it.

"Oh, sure," Yang sneered. "But whacking at each other with sabers and death scythes is a-okay, right?"

"Yeah!"

Weiss seemed to take that point a little more seriously than Ruby, frowning slightly in thought. Ruby gave her arm a light tug to get her attention.

"It's totally different," she assured her partner. "Our weapons are like paintbrushes, and when we fight we make art! Punching is _just_ you trying to hurt someone else." She glared at Yang again.

"You sound like your uncle," Professor Awesome muttered.

Ruby gasped. "Oh right! You know Uncle Qrow! Isn't he the coolest? Does he ever talk about us? Did he tell you he helped build Crescent Rose? 'Cause he did, and he had a lot of fun. And-"

She tipped sideways a bit as Weiss yanked on her hand.

"Shush!" her partner hissed.

Now the professor snorted humorously. "Yes, he mentioned he had some nieces that were aspiring huntresses. That was about it, though. Anyway, good fight. What were your thoughts, before I give you mine?"

Ruby and Weiss looked at each other.

"Well... " Weiss said slowly, "I feel like Ruby wasn't quite _ready_ for the fight at the start."

Ruby grinned sheepishly at that. Yeah… it was true.

"Though towards the end there she seemed to get into it."

The sheepishness left Ruby's smile, and she beamed proudly. That had sounded like a compliment!

"Though she didn't even _try_ to take advantage of her range."

Aw. Ruby's face fell. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Weiss took a breath. "I was expecting you to use your semblance to just zoom away and then snipe at me from afar, but you didn't."

Ruby blinked. "Well, _yeah_! Of course I didn't-that wouldn't be any fun! Plus, Professor Awesome said not to cause flickers!"

Weiss crossed her arms like she was offended. "I would _not_ flicker from that."

"Yes, you would," said Professor Awesome, Yang, and Blake all at the same time.

Weiss huffed indignantly and tilted her chin away, then side-eyed Crescent Rose suspiciously.

The professor waved his hand. "That was fine. There are better ways to practice sniping than here in a duel to test your fighting styles." Ruby smiled, and he smiled back. "Anything else?"

"I have a question!" Ruby shouted, looking at Weiss and raising her hand.

Weiss quickly pulled her hand down with a roll of her eyes. "Yes?"

"Why'd you stop blasting me with ice magic?"

Weiss closed her eyes and hung her head while their two teammates laughed.

"I ran out of Dust, Ruby."

_'Oh. Duh.'_

"And you wouldn't have given me time to reload."

"Right. Yeah. Of course. I knew that."

Weiss rolled her eyes.

"That's something you should be mindful of, all of you," Professor Awesome said. "When your opponents use resources-Dust, bullets, anything-_count_. Weiss, you've got seven rounds of Dust in that sword of yours?"

"Six," she corrected.

The professor frowned. "Wait, which-"

"The two casts of water Dust came from the same vial."

"Oh. Huh. They wouldn't have hit very hard then, huh?"

Weiss shrugged and glanced back at Ruby. "I was expecting her to dodge them. I was just trying to force her to the ground." She squinted at Ruby. "I was _not_ expecting her to just rush at me."

"Hey!" Ruby protested. "That's, like, _all_ you did to me!"

"I didn't want you sniping me!"

"I wasn't going to!"

"Well _I _didn't know that!"

"Alright, shuddup you two," Yang grumbled. "It's our turn now." She vaulted over the barrier.

Weiss and Ruby filled the spots their teammates vacated while the professor gave some more teachery advice.

"Weiss, that was very good. Excellent form, powerful casting, and you approached the fight well. I will say that you need to work on putting more aura into your weapon. You were doing very little damage when you hit. Other opponents won't always let you land so many attacks."

Ruby was going to frown, feeling a bit snubbed, but the professor didn't seem to mean it as a criticism of her.

"Yes sir," Weiss said.

"And don't stick so closely to the movesets you've learned. They're meant to help you practice movements, not to be attack patterns that you're hardstuck to in a fight."

"Was I… doing that?" Weiss asked, frowning.

The professor nodded. "There were at least two instances there at the end of the fight and one in the middle where you two were dueling and you followed what looks very much like a practice maneuver instead of going in on an opening. I can point them out to you in the video later."

"Yes sir," Weiss said, slightly dejectedly.

"What about me?" Ruby chirped, excited for her own Super Awesome Pro Huntsman Teaching Moment.

"You, Ruby, mostly need to work on actually attacking the enemy."

Ruby pouted a bit. Weiss wasn't her enemy!

"You also need to take more advantage of how hard your weapon hits. It's _heavy_. Weiss' sword arm was getting battered every time she tried to block. Focus on throwing attacks that your opponent can't evade-_force_ them to block and take that beating."

"Okay!"

"There were some other little things for both of you, but we can go over it with the video."

They focused on Yang and Blake, who were lined up in the same spots Ruby and Weiss had been. There were still icicles scattered about the flat plain, and the half of the wall of ice Ruby hadn't cleaved apart still stood, the chunks of the other half laying around it.

"Alright!" Professor Awesome clapped again. "Good, clean fight. No biting, hair pulling, _nipple twisting_." Blake let out a little giggle while Yang glared at her, and Ruby got the feeling there was an inside joke she wasn't on the inside of. "Fight's down to thirty percent aura or first to yield. Don't hit hard enough to cause a flicker, _Yang_."

"Hey, it's not my fault I'm jacked as fuck, okay?"

_'Yes it is,'_ Ruby thought to herself.

"Just… don't punch your partner's head off, alright? You two ready?"

Ruby wondered how their professor knew Yang could hit so dang hard-seriously, the phrase 'hit like a truck' didn't even cover it when Yang landed a punch with her semblance. 'Hit like a freight train with a drill head' was more accurate.

"Yep!" Yang replied excitedly.

Blake gave a solemn, focused nod and dropped low into a fight position.

"Hey, Weiss?" Ruby whispered quietly to her partner.

"Yes, Ruby?" Weiss respond with a hint of a smile.

"You're pretty awesome."

Weiss' looked away. Ruby half expected her to just say 'I know' and leave it at that, but then Weiss turned to her with a very unhidden, very pretty smile. "Thank you, Ruby. You're prett awesome, too."

Ruby's heart did a happy little flip. Weiss thought she was awesome! That must mean she was super _duper_ awesome, 'cause that's what Weiss was.

She let out a happy wiggle and turned back to watch their teammates.

"Get ready!" Professor Awesome shouted.

Yang clicked out Ember Celica, keeping her arms loose at her sides.

Blake drew her sword-and the sheath, too, 'cause she's weird like that.

"Get set!"

Yang fell into a relaxed boxer's stance, arms up, on the balls of her feet, bouncing back and forth.

Blake drew her sword, keeping her single-bladed sheath in her off hand, and gave them each a twirl.

"Fight!"

BANG!

Yang rocketed forward with a gravity blast from her gauntlets-much the way Weiss had but way, _way_ louder and scarier. Ruby smiled and wiggled happily a bit because _she'd_ been the one to make the modifications to Ember Celica to let them fire gravity rounds a little over a year ago.

She'd also come to regret that decision, because it meant Yang could now chase after her fairly well when she ran away with her semblance. She silently prayed for Blake. She'd been sparring with Yang as far back as she could remember, but it was never any less terrifying to see the blur of gold that was Yang's fist meteoring towards her face. And this would be Blake's first time.

When Yang landed a punch right on Blake's chin right off the bat, Ruby knew it would be over soon. No way Blake could take many more of th-

_'Wait, what?'_

Yang's fist passed through thick, black shadow, and Blake was suddenly at her side, spinning to land one-two-three quick hits into Yang's rib cage.

Whoa.

Yang seemed similarly surprised, coming to a full stop to stare down at her side incredulously, then blinking at Blake.

Blake blinked back, like a deer in headlights, as she realized just how close she was to a now peeved Yang.

She backflipped away just in time to dodge a right hook, leaving a shadow behind that dodged the other way. Yang spent an extra second to punch it before growling as it drifted away like smoke.

Okay, Blake was _really_ good at dodging.

Yang blasted away in pursuit of the ninja girl, and the fight fell into a pattern of Yang swinging three or four hit combos that Blake somehow managed to perfectly dodge, then Blake trading back a couple of light blows to Yang's back or side.

Ruby watched Yang's aura tick down by ones and twos with growing trepidation. Yes, Blake was doing well, but Yang would be building up her semblance, and she was due to release it soon. The tiny hits were good, because it meant Yang wouldn't store up so much energy, but she could also hold onto it longer.

Fighting Yang was always so hard because doing what you're supposed to do-hitting your opponent-made the fight _more _dangerous for you instead of less.

All it would take is one slip-up from Blake…

There it was.

Blake did another shadowstep to the side, but this time Yang was ready for it, and the resulting fist-to-stomach impact knocked Blake on her butt and made her let out an "oof!" that Ruby could hear all the way over here.

And… yep. Blake's aura went from ninety-four (she was right yesterday, her semblance _was_ cheap) to seventy just like that. One hit. It wasn't even a very big one by Yang standards.

Yang was scary.

Diving forward, Yang tried to tackle Blake while she was on the ground, but crashed into nothing but dirt and shadow. But… where did Bl-

Blake reappeared on her feet several yards away, her aura taking a seven point drop at the same time.

_'Right. She can teleport.'_

This time, Blake changed tacts. She started running diagonally away from Yang, turned backwards to fire her pistol at the charging blonde.

Two seconds passed like this. Three. Four. Someone might wonder why Yang would keep trying to run Blake down when she was taking pointless damage for it, but Ruby recognized that Yang was just building her semblance up again. She'd realized that she wasn't going to land too many hits this fight and was just trying to hit like a freight train when she finally got off a punch.

Apparently Yang decided she'd built up enough energy, fourteen points of damage later. She launched herself forward with a gravity round, then another while she was still in the air that put her in a path to land in front of Blake.

Blake stopped and changed directions, moving back in the direction Yang was coming from. In response, Yang shot of three rounds of regular shells while she sailed through the air, two of which caught Blake in the side and leg, causing her to stumble.

Yang landed and quickly jumped forward to cover the ten-ish feet of space between her and her target, bring her fist back to land a devastating punch full of momentum…

Her hand passed through shadow as Blake just _barely_ sidestepped in time, but it seemed like Yang had expected to land the blow, because when she hit the ground her semblance caused a tiny eruption. The ground was left cratered, and the explosion was big enough that it caught an unprepared Blake in its radius.

She let out a yelp as her feet were knocked out from under her, and Yang brought a fist around. Blake clearly saw the fist coming and tried to twist out of the way, but it seemed like her semblance was still "on cooldown" because she didn't disappear with a shadow clone. Yang's fist tracked her attempted dodge and cracked right into the side of her face.

The force of the blow sent Blake spinning in a half circle as she fell, and she landed on the ground with a small bounce. Ten percent of her aura gone with that one, non-empowered punch.

Blake was down to fifty-five while Yang was sitting at seventy-two, and a good chunk of the damage she'd taken she'd _wanted_ to take.

Yang tried to quickly stomp down on Blake's back, but the girl rolled away on her side, then somehow pushed herself up with an arm and a leg, spinning sideways into a standing position and dropping into a battle stance.

_'What a freaking ninja.'_

Too bad it probably wouldn't matter. Yang gave her partner all of half a second to get her bearings before firing into another furious chain of jabs and punches and kicks and one attempted headbutt that didn't connect by a _hair_.

Blake started to get tired, moving slower and slower, while Yang continued to go full throttle. She led the fight to the edge of the pile of ice from Weiss' wall. She tried to dance around the ice crystals laying on the ground and lead Yang into them, but Yang was too sure-footed, either stepping to the sides or just stomping on the shards of ice and not slipping at all. The end of the fight wasn't a climactic finale like it had been with Ruby and Weiss. Instead, Yang landed another quick series of blows into a battered Blake that dropped her to twenty-eight percent and Professor Awesome immediately yelled, "TIME!"

Yang stumbled to wind down mid swing while Blake just collapsed onto the ground and held her sides. She groaned something that made Yang laugh, and Ruby really wanted to know what it was. She liked laughing!

"Geez, she's a machine, isn't she?" Professor Awesome muttered to himself.

"Yup! Yang's the best!" Ruby replied, assuming that the professor was _obviously_ talking about her super awesome powerful scary big sister.

Weiss huffed and crossed her arms. "I could take her," she grumbled, to which the professor snorted a laugh.

"Didn't mean anything by it, Weiss," he said. "_That_ would be a great fight to watch."

"Oooh, yeah!" Ruby agreed, clutching Weiss' arm with both hands and jumping up and down excitedly. "I wanna see you fight Yang!"

Weiss pursed her lips disapprovingly at Ruby. "I'm not a jackhammer, Ruby. Stop it." Ruby stopped jumping. "I'd be happy to fight her…" Weiss continued before trailing off to glance down at her myAura numbers. "But maybe later."

Ruby giggled.

Off in the 'arena', Yang pulled Blake to her feet. They walked back together, Blake leaning on her partner's arm every few moments to stay steady. They talked quietly to each other, Yang with a wide grin and Blake with her subdued, but genuine, smile. It seemed she wasn't too bitter about having the crap beaten out of her.

"Whachya think, Captain Rubes?" Yang called out when they were closer.

Ruby bounced up and down again. "That was awesome! _You're _awesome. All punchy and super fast and strong! And _Blake_! You're so ninja I bet you can out dodge other ninjas! And your shadows are so cool! You made that one that tricked Yang _move_! And-"

Weiss tugged on her arm again. Ruby stopped talking immediately, not needing to be told to 'shush' now.

"Well shucks, thanks Peanut," Yang said with an even bigger grin.

"Yeah, that was… something," Professor Awesome added. "Thoughts?" he asked the pair.

"Blake's so _annoying_!" Yang bursted out, prompting a startled laugh from the girl leaning on outstretched arm. "She's so freaking hard to hit! It's like trying to grab… smoke."

Blake patted her on the arm. "You seemed to manage anyway," she grumbled.

"Well, yeah! But I had to work for pretty freaking hard."

"Oh, boo hoo," Blake teased. "Poor Yang, having to put in some effort to beat to a pulp the partner that didn't even get a chance to touch her."

"What do you mean?" Yang protested. "You hit me a lot!"

"Fat lot of good _that_ did."

Yang laughed. "Yeah, well you still _hit_ me. No complaining!"

"I had to be on defense the _entire_ fight. I didn't _once_ get a chance to attack _you_, other than some cheap swings while running away." She seemed genuinely sad at that last statement.

Yang threw her arm around her partner and rubbed her shoulder. "It's okay, Blakey-Blake. You just need to be scarier!"

Blake grunted and folded her arms around herself.

"Well… yes." Professor Awesome took a breath, preparing to deliver more teachery wisdom. "You had some opportunities to try to turn the tempo of the fight in your favor, Blake. You need to take those when they're presented to you, otherwise an opponent like Yang will just run you into the dirt."

Blake grimaced. "Sorry. I just kinda… panicked and wanted to get _away_."

Yang frowned at that and looked down guiltily, dropping her arm from around Blake's shoulders.

"Understandably," Professor Awesome consoled lightly. "Just something to work on. And Yang, the inverse for you."

"Hm?"

"Once you got into the rhythm of the fight, you clearly stopped expecting Blake to really attack you. Your guard dropped 'cause you kept going _in_. Granted, it let you catch Blake out of a couple of her dodges, but other opponents might take advantage of it."

Yang nodded slowly, though her face skewed up like she wanted to argue. "But… but how am I supposed to catch her, then? I tried to be clever but she dodged anyway, so how do I hit her without just going faster?"

The professor smiled. "The trick is to be clever _and_ quick." When Yang frowned deeper at that response, he bobbed his head back and forth. "It's… Look at it this way: you were already ahead in the fight and wearing her down. Waiting for that one hit like you did at the start was working. So no sense it giving your opponent an opening, yeah?"

"I guess."

He smiled again. "I know you probably felt like you were losing 'cause you weren't hitting her. I was the same way."

"You were?" Yang questioned, her eyes going wide.

"For sure! Except for me it was worse, 'cause I really _was_ losing if I didn't land hits. My semblance is backwards from yours-I build up big hits from _dealing_ damage, not taking it. It took me a long time to learn that patience was better than power, and even longer to actually get good at implementing it."

Yang frowned again. "I don't _wanna_ wait a long time to get good."

Professor Awesome chuckled at that. "You probably won't have to. You're already lightyears ahead of where I was as a fishy."

"Yeah?" Yang's eyes were both doubtful and hopeful.

Professor Awesome nodded enthusiastically. "Oh yeah. You're all _way_ ahead of where my class was at your age. It's kinda nuts. Ruby and Blake woulda beat the crap outta most of us."

Ruby gave a happy hum at that. That was pretty awesome! The training she and Yang had been doing for years was paying off!

"You girls want to go through the videos now?" Professor Awesome checked his watch. "We've still got… twelve minutes before Team JNPR's time slot. We can go over a bit now and finish up on Wednesday, or just do it all Wednesday. Up to you."

"I wanna watch it now!" Ruby chirped immediately.

Blake let out a soft groan, and everyone turned to look at her. She blinked in surprise at the sudden attention.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean t-now's fine."

Ruby _really _wanted to watch it now, but… Blake looked _really_ battered. Her head was hanging slightly, and her shoulders were slumped forward. Ruby knew how she probably felt, having taken a good hundred thousand billion punches from Yang herself.

"It's okay," she said. "We can wait. Rest up and watch it later."

Blake shook her head quickly. "No no! Really, it's okay. We can watch it now. Don't mind me."

It was Yang who responded, giving the girl another one-armed squeeze. "It's okay, Blakey-Blake. I kinda want to chill out too."

Blake raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh yeah? Feeling a little beat up?"

Yang tried and failed to hide a grin. "Yeah, my knuckles are."

Everyone was startled when Weiss burst out laughing. Yang and Blake both looked at her in shock while Ruby beamed brightly. She quickly covered her mouth with a fist, cutting off her laughter and flushing with embarrassment.

"Sorry," she whispered.

Ruby giggled and hugged Weiss' arm, earning a disapproving frown that she pointedly ignored. "Yang's right though, Blake. We'll get some rest and watch it later."

"Any chance you could send us the videos to watch ourselves before Wednesday?" Weiss asked the professor.

"Sure! I'll ping them to Ruby after I get done with the last class today."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered. "Yang, you wanna watch them for movie night?"

Yang wrinkled her nose at that, but Weiss spoke up before she could respond. "Movie night?"

"Yeah!" Ruby turned to her partner. "Friday night is movie night! And then Saturday is Super Awesome Yangcake Breakfast Day!"

"Yeah, _that's_ not a mouthful at all," Blake joked.

"Yeah it is!" Ruby replied. "A mouthful of pancakes!"

"You're _such_ a dolt," Weiss told her.

The professor cleared his throat loudly. "You four derpwads go finish this conversation somewhere else. I gotta clean up this dumb ice wall before JNPR gets here."

"I am _not_ a derpwad," Weiss retaliated indignantly.

"Fine, you _three_ derpwads and Ice Queen over here."

"Hey!"

"C'mon, guys!" Ruby ordered, tugging Weiss behind her as she headed out. She grabbed Weiss' notebook and handed it to her. "It's lunch time, then game time, then movie time!"

"When is _study_ time, Ruby Rose?" Weiss asked pointedly.

"Pfft. Study time, shmudy time."

"Rubyyy…" Weiss intoned, a disapproving edge to her voice.

"Ugh, _fine_! Lunch time, then study time, _then _game and movie time. Happy?"

"No."

"But hwaaa?"

"Happiness is for dummies. I _am_, however, content."

Ruby frowned in confusion at that, not knowing how she was supposed to respond.

"You're so weird, Weiss," Yang said for her. She wouldn't have worded it _exactly_ like that, but… well, yeah, she would have, actually, but she decided not to say anything rather than say something kinda mean.

"That's fresh, coming from you," Weiss quipped back, lifting her chin away.

"It's okay, Weiss," Ruby consoled her partner, giving her arm a rub. "It's a cute kinda weird."

"I'm not _cute_ either!"

"But Wei-eisss! Being cute is good!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Sure, but _I'm _not cute. _You're_ cute. I'm…" she trailed off, trying to come up with a good word to describe herself.

Ruby had some!

"Pretty? Beautiful? Princessy? Majestic? Regal?"

"Ooh, I like regal," Weiss grinned. She gave Ruby's hand a pat where it was wrapped around her bicep.

"Dork," Yang whispered as she and Blake came up to walk beside Ruby.

"I will stab you."

"Do it, I dare you."

Weiss looked away with a huff. "I will! I'm just… gonna wait until I have all my Aura back."

Yang laughed happily at that. "Probably a good call."

When Weiss took a deep breath to launch some kind of retort, Ruby felt it was best to intercede. "By the way, Weiss!" she chirped.

"Hm?"

"What's in the notebook?" She pointed to the blue spiral notebook in Weiss' non-Ruby-hugged hand.

Weiss pulled the notebook, putting her body between it and the rest of the team. "It's a secret."

Ruby gave her partner a pout. "But Wei-eissss! I wanna knooow!"

Weiss squinted in thought for a little bit, then glanced at Blake and Yang. She turned back to Ruby. "I'll show you later."

Ruby's eyes went wide. "Ooooh, okay. Sure!"

It was going to be _their_ secret! And then Ruby could lord her Super Awesome Weiss Secret over Yang and make her jealous!

Although Yang might not care…

"Well now _I'm _curious," Blake said, leaning past Yang to peer suspiciously at the corner of the notebook that was visible tucked under Weiss' armpit.

"Well, too bad!" Weiss huffed, moving a little bit to the right to get some more space from Blake and Yang. Ruby, being now surgically attached to her, was dragged along.

"Careful, Blake," Yang said teasingly. "You know what they say: curiosity killed the cat."

Blake's eyes went SUPER wide. Her bow wiggled a bit, even though there wasn't that much of a breeze.

"W-w-what?"

Yang and Ruby looked at each other, confused. "It's just a saying, Blake," Ruby said.

"Y-yeah, but I'm not a c-cat." She looked… _scared_.

_'What the frickity frack?'_

"You can still use the saying to apply to people, Blakey-Blake," Yang said, softly and consolingly. "Otherwise it would be a pretty useless saying. It would only apply to, like, cat faunus. Or _actual_ cats."

"Oh. Okay…"

Yang frowned. "What's wrong? I don't underst-"

"Just forget about it!" Blake quickly interrupted her. "I'm sorry. I'm just beat up and confused, okay? It's your own fault, really, ya big bully." She gave a smile that was definitely forced, then stared intently at her shoes.

Yang blinked in confusion, then looked at Ruby for answers Ruby didn't have. She shrugged.

"So, who gets to pick the movie tonight?" she asked to movie the conversation away from Blake's weirdness and into more comfortable territory.

"Me!" Yang immediately decreed. "You picked last time!"

"No, Dad did! And we have two new people to add to the cycle now, so where should we start?"

"Still me!" Yang easily.

"Ugh!" Ruby turned to her partner. "What do you think, Weiss? Would you like to pick a movie?" She said she didn't watch movies much, probably 'cause whatever princessy upbringing she had didn't let her. But now she could!

Weiss pursed her lips and shook her head slightly. "I wouldn't even know where to start, Ruby."

"Well I can help with that! I super highly duper recommend the Wonder movies. You could start with the first one, Titanium Man, which was pretty cool. Captain Vale had some cool movies. Revengers is the team up series and it's _awesome_ and the new one comes out next month and I'm sooooo excited but they might confuse you if you don't know the characters. There's the-"

"Hold up!" Yang shouted, cutting her off. "You can't just get her to pick _your_ movies for you, Ruby. Then that's just like you getting an extra pick!"

"I'm just trying to help her with ideas!"

They were in the cafeteria now, settling into the line for food-something that looked and vaguely smelled like lasagna was being served up ahead, but Ruby couldn't trust the sketchy cafeteria foods that much. It would be safer to call it Cafeteria Brand Lasagna ™ .

"Why don't we just go in team order?" Blake suggested. "We're team RWBY, so Ruby picks first, then Weiss, then me, then this angry blonde Ursa that's glaring at me like I just put gum in her hair."

Yang definitely looked pretty grumpy. "Why would you suggest an idea that makes me go last?! We're partners, we're supposed to be on the same side!"

Blake smirked. "We're _teammates_ Yang; we're _all_ on the same side."

Weiss leaned close to Ruby and fake whispered, "Don't listen to her, Ruby. It's us versus them."

Yang wheeled around and pointed at Weiss, her arm crossing in front of Ruby's face. "See?! They're plotting against us! We have to band together or we're _doomed_, Blake! Soon we'll be doing nothing but eating cookies and doing homework all day!"

The other three girls all laughed at that.

"I just think it makes sense," Blake deflected with a light shrug.

"I do too!" Ruby chirped, coming to Blake's defense.

"Shut up, you," Yang muttered, tousling Ruby's hair. "You just like it 'cause it lets you go first."

"Nuh-uuuh! It makes sense!"

Weiss joined in the argument. "Yang, it's a cycle. After the first rotation it literally won't make a difference who was first or last."

Yang gave an angry pout. "Your _face_ is a cycle."

"What _is_ it with you two and calling my face random objects?!" Weiss cried out, throwing her hands up in the air, consequently loosening Ruby's grip on the one arm.

Ruby, giggling, took that as a good sign to let go. They were about to grab food, anyway. Or, as Weiss called it, "food".

"It's settled, then," she said. "I'm picking the movie tonight!"

Yang grumbled something to Blake that made the girl roll her eyes and smile.

Weiss looked at Ruby with a surprisingly forlorn expression. "Do I _have_ to join movie night?" she half-whined.

"Yes!" Ruby answered immediately. "It'll be fun, I promise!"

"Ugh, _fine_."

_'Woohoo!'_

They were gonna have movie night, which was always awesome, but this time it would have Weiss and Blake too, so it would be even _more_ awesome!

* * *

Ruby settled onto the middle seat of the couch, as was tradition, and Yang sat to her right, one arm on the armrest and one around Ruby's waist, as was tradition. Weiss decided to sit off on the big single person poofy chair by herself, unfortunately, but at least she was still here! Blake sat to Ruby's other side, curling her knees up to her chest and watching the faces of her teammates as much or more than she was watching the movie on the screen.

Ruby had picked Titanium Man. She wanted Weiss to see some of the Wonder movies, and maybe if she liked them they could go see the new Revengers movie together in the theatre!

Of course, Yang had whined and moaned about how lame it was that she was forced to watch such a "lame action flick" again, but her version of good movies was horror thriller zombie ghosty crap, so what the heck did she know? Besides, she always falls asleep halfway through most of the movies they watch anyway, just like Dad.

Ruby did her best to fill Weiss and Blake in on some of the universe while the movie was starting, but Yang kept squeezing her and saying "Don't talk during the movie!", so she eventually stopped with a pout.

Every once in a while, Ruby would check on Weiss to see how she was enjoying the movie. She spent the entire time watching attentively, pupils wider than normal from the bright tv in the dark room. Her pretty blue irises were almost invisible because the whites and blues from the screen's light made them blend in with the whites of her eyes. Whenever something surprising would happen in the movie, like Titanium Man getting kidnapped from a convoy by the White Fang, Weiss would let out a little gasp that was _so_ adorable.

Ruby decided right then and there that watching Weiss watch movies was one of her new favorite pastimes.

She laid her head on Yang's shoulder and snuggled a little closer, her body finally catching up to the exhausting fight from earlier today. She wondered how Bl-yep, Blake was dozing off. Ruby smiled at the cute sight of the girl leaning off to the side, her head occasionally dipping low enough that she'd startle awake, blinking rapidly, before relaxing and doing it again.

After the third time Blake blinked herself awake, Ruby tapped the girls foot with her own.

"Hey," she said quietly, "pull the footrest out."

Blake jumped a little bit when her foot got touched, before calming back down and shooting Ruby an embarrassed smile and nodding, kicking out the footrest and laying down mostly flat.

It didn't take her long to fall asleep after that.

There were only three of them left watching now, and Yang was starting to blink heavily. She rested her head on top of Ruby's where it layed on her shoulder and yawned deeply.

They were getting to one of Ruby's favorite parts, when Titanium Man busted out of the cave he was being kept prisoner in with his awesome super suit, flame throwing people with fire Dust and flying away with gravity Dust.

"Keep in mind," she whispered to Weiss, "that this movie is over ten years old, so the Dust flame thrower and rocket hands and feet were a bigger deal back then."

Weiss nodded slowly, eyes still on the screen. "We _still_ haven't made a personal flight suit," she said absently.

Yang inhaled a deep breath and shifted around a little bit, leaning a bit more heavily on her sister. Ruby slowly-_slowly-_turned her head, trying to get a peek at her sister's face while not disturbing her.

Yep. Her eyelids were fluttering a _bunch_. She was probably in that weird pseudo-sleep state where the things that were happening around her were getting mixed into her dreams.

Soon it was just Ruby and Weiss left watching. Ruby stayed _relatively_ quiet, but she did provide some super helpful and absolutely necessary explanations for some stuff now that Yang wasn't awake to tell her to shut up.

Luckily, Weiss didn't seem to mind. Ruby wasn't quite positive her partner heard everything she said because she was so engrossed in the movie.

How freaking awesome was that?!

When the movie ended, the room went a dark, the black end credits screen the only source of light. Durn, they should have turned on the kitchen light behind them or something.

Weiss sat there quietly, forehead ever so slightly creased as she mentally digested the movie. Ruby waited for her to say something, really _really_ curious what her first thoughts were gonna be. Of course, waiting patiently was hard, so Ruby had to focus her energy on bouncing her leg up and down quietly until Weiss spoke.

"... Huh," the princess finally said.

Ruby took that as an invitation. "What did you think? Was it awesome? What did you think of the super suit? And the AI guy, Jerome? What was your favorite part? Did you like the sci-fi Dust stuff they did? Do you think any of that would actually work? *_gasp!* _Do you want to try to make a Titanium Man suit?!"

She got a little too excited at that last part, and Yang stirred a bit. She paused her barrage of questions to wait for her sister to settle down again, and Weiss took the opportunity to get a word in.

"It was… a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting," she admitted.

Ruby beamed at that.

"I liked the… relatable outlandishness of it all?" Weiss struggled to figure out how to phrase her thoughts. "As in, I can't see this kind of story _actually_ happening to someone, but I can also imagine being in that situation and how I would react…"

"Oh yeah? What would you do if you were Ronny Lark?"

Weiss let out a breathy laugh. "Oh, I probably would have gotten myself killed at the very beginning when the White Fang tried to kidnap me."

"Whaaaat? No way, you could totally have taken them!"

Weiss gave her a smile. "I'm glad you think so." Her expression turned dark. "But yeah, there's no way I would let those animals take me alive."

Something in the way she said it made Ruby think there was something more there than just not wanting to get kidnapped. "Do you, like, extra not like the White Fang or something?"

The smile Weiss gave her this time was another one of those weirdly sad ones. "Let's just say those creatures have a… history… with my family."

"Oh." What was Ruby supposed to say to that? From what she knew, the White Fang were an faunice activist group, the biggest one, that started being a little aggressive in the past couple of years with their campaigning. But that didn't seem bad enough to explain the anger and… hurt (?) on Weiss' face right now. Should she ask? Was that too sensitive?

Weiss didn't give her a chance to decide, moving the conversation along.

"Anyway," she said, "that was… nice. Fun. There are more of these?"

"Yeah!" Ruby immediately shifted back to excited again. "Titanium Man Two and Three weren't all that spectacular, but he's also in the Revenger's movies and one of the Captain Vale movies and those are super duper awesome."

It occured to Ruby in that moment that she used 'super duper awesome' to describe a lot of things, but… it was accurate, right?

"Well…" Weiss said slowly. "I suppose I could stomach watching those with you." She said it begrudgingly, but the way her lips pursed to the side to contain a smile let Ruby know she wasn't all that against the idea. "Now… how do we get these two buffoons to bed?"

Ruby followed her gaze to Blake and Yang, both still fast asleep.

"I think we're gonna have to wake Yang up…" she answered apprehensively. At home, Yang and Dad fell asleep watching movies all the time, and Ruby just left them in the living room-or, if she was feeling extra cuddly that night, she'd just fall asleep next to Yang. But they couldn't do that here, right? This was a public living room. Sleeping here was probably not okay.

"And ask her to carry Blake?" Weiss asked, finishing the idea Ruby had started.

"Yeah."

But waking Yang when she was really tired could be… dangerous. She _really_ didn't like getting woken up.

Ruby reached out and got a grip around Yang's wrists. She definitely wasn't strong enough to stop Yang from flailing her arms, but hopefully it would be enough to keep her from getting hit in the face.

"Yaaa-aaang," Ruby sing-song whispered gently, nudging Yang's head up with her own. "Yaaa-aaang, wake uuu-uuup."

Another head nudge did the trick.

Yang snorted and woke with a start, eyes going wide. "Hruh?!" she grunted, swinging her arms up to… it probably would have resulted in an elbow to Ruby's nose if she hadn't been ready for it. Her death grip on Yang's wrists meant that the girls arms just jerked around a little bit.

"Oh shit, did I fall asleep?" Yang muttered. She lifted one hand to rub at her eyes, and Ruby let go of her arms to let her.

"A lil' bit," she replied, giving Yang an arm to lean on as the girl pushed herself to her feet.

"Movie done?" Yang asked.

"Yep!" They hadn't gotten to the end credits scene, but it wasn't _that_ important.

"Do you think you could carry Blake to bed?" Weiss asked, standing herself with a graceful, princessy motion.

"I'm just a pack mule to you two, aren't I?" Yang grumbled, but she didn't seem to mind all that much. She walked over to and picked up Blake like she had Ruby the other night.

Ruby tried to copy the way Weiss stood up, but it didn't really work. She ended up almost tripping over her crossed feet and had to use Yang to catch herself.

"You alright?" Yang asked, confused because she hadn't seen what Ruby had just done behind her.

"Yep! All good!" Ruby chirped back, trying to hide her embarrassment. She glanced at Weiss, but the girl's expression didn't indicate that she'd noticed either.

_'Phew.'_

"Yyyang?" Blake's sleepy voice sounded out from Yang's arms. Ruby couldn't see Blake's face from where she and Weiss were behind Yang, but she could bet it was probably cute and sleepy.

"It's a-ight, Blakey-Blake. Just bringing you to bed."

"Oh… Okay."

Ruby smiled at the interaction and glanced at Weiss next to her to find the girl also smiling a bit. When Weiss caught Ruby looking, though, she wiped the smile on her face and rolled her eyes. It was one of those half eye rolls, though. The one that meant Weiss was actually smiling.

Ruby rushed ahead of Yang to unlock their bedroom with her scroll and opened the door for her sister to carry Blake through. She held it open for Weiss, too, who gave her a princessy nod of appreciation.

Yang settled Blake gently into bed and tucked her in just like she'd done with Ruby a billion times in the past, then climbed up to her own bed and collapsed in it, not even bothering with pajamas.

Weiss took the time to actually prep for sleep, so Ruby did too. They took turns brushing teeth and changing into pjs in the closet. Weiss spent some extra time washing her face with some fancy face soap stuff and scrubbing it with a little circular pad. That was probably why her skin looked so perfect.

"Are we still going to the cookie shop and sushi place tomorrow?" Ruby asked. She was pretty certain Weiss wouldn't go back on that, but maybe she forgot?

"Of course!" Weiss answered as she scrubbed her nose. "I promised, didn't I?"

With a smile and a nod, Ruby left the bathroom and got comfy in her bed, Weiss following shortly behind her.

"Good night, team," she said to the room.

It appeared Blake and Yang were both knocked out, because it was only Weiss who responded with a soft "Good night, Ruby."

Ruby smiled and nuzzled into her pillow. Her last thought before she drifted off to sleep was that today had been such a good day. And tomorrow was going to be amazing too!

* * *

**Hope you guys enjoyed! Next chapter is an interlude! :O Bakana! Looking forward to writing a villain, huehuehue! **

**Like, comment, subscribe, yada yada, check out my website ( writingbyjace .com ), shoutouts on the RWBY subreddit for Fan Fiction Friday are always appreciated 3**

**See you guys next week!**


	15. Seeding 1-X

A FEW WEEKS AGO…

* * *

"I want him dead!"

Junior slammed his hands on the dark wood table to emphasize the point.

Roman rolled his eyes.

The room was dark, dim, theatre-esque lighting coming from consoles on the far side of the room, and from the wide window above those consoles that overlooked the sparse warehouse that was Roman's current base of operations.

There were three other singular points of light from the white Dust crystals on the necklaces of Matriarch and her two attendants, the religious nut bag crime lords that Roman had had to learn to deal with over the years because no other groups in the Southskirts seemed able to usurp them. All three of them looked identical, long black dresses and hair bleached to stark whiteness, red makeup adding color to the contrast.

Across from Matriarch sat Junior, boss of Dancetown, the locals' name for the clubbing district and its surroundings in downtown Vale City. The Malachite twins stood behind them, the one in red-Roman could never remember their first names for the life of him, much less which was which-had her arm in a sling and a nasty cut stitched up from her neck down to her collarbone. A result of an encounter the other night with the mysterious killer Junior was currently ranting about.

Once again Roman stewed a bit at how Junior had copied him in finding a killer teenage girl to be his muscle after Roman had acquired Neo's services. It definitely felt weird telling a seventeen year old to break into high security locations and steal things or to disappear troublesome cops or overly inquisitive reporters, but since his wife had been killed, it was a weird feeling he had to learn to deal with. Like so much else in his life.

Briar, the beefy lieutenant from the White Fang that the Taurus boy had sent as a representative, sat further down the table on Junior's side, looking impatient and angry. But he always looked angry. He also didn't matter. Roman didn't deal with lackeys, no matter how many muscles or chainsaws they carried around.

Across from Briar sat Slate. The accountant. Dark suit, button-down light grey undershirt, plain, black-and-white tile patterned tie, glasses covering narrow eyes under a slicked back black hairline. Roman liked Slate-always professional, all about the business, predictable and easy to manage. The suited man analyzed everything based on numbers and projected outcomes, and always chose the outcome with the greatest numerical benefit to him and his organization.

Easy.

"Yes, you can keep saying that as much as you want, _Junior_," Slate drawled. "It won't make him any more or less dead."

Junior slammed two meaty hands on the table and shot to his feet with a growl. "I bet you'd care more if it was your m-"

"Junior!" Roman barked, instantly quieting the blustering moron and drawing every eye in the room. "Sit the _fuck_ down!"

He always hated having to do this. To be the hard ass. He enjoyed being his sarcastic, smarmy self-something Rhea had loved too. But sometimes these fuckers needed to be reminded that _he_ was in charge. _He _was the crime lord of Vale City. And they were second.

Without Rhea, he wasn't sure how long he would _stay_ on top. She had been his loving wife and mother of his children at home, and his Beacon trained enforcer on the streets of Vale. And she was sorely missed on both fronts now.

Luckily, she and Roman had culled the city's underworld to the point where the only ones of significant clout left, the three seated with him at the table, excluding the White Fang douche, weren't likely to be ones to make a power grab from him. They'd killed the ambitious ones.p Slate liked the status quo he and Roman had struck. Matriarch was not interested in the inner city, content to keep the Southern 'burbs in her vice grip of religious zealousy. And Junior… The idea of betraying Roman probably hadn't even popped into his tiny brain, and if it had, he wouldn't be able to orchestrate it.

The White Fang might become a problem, though they were in the mountains right now. Roman couldn't imagine them making a play for the city, though. They had other agendas, like burning the city down.

He was stirred out of his musings when Junior fell back into his chair with a glare. The man's heavy build made the chair screech backward, annoying the shit out of Roman and causing Slate to sneer in distaste. Roman kept his composure, though, and addressed Junior.

"You haven't given us any workable intel to go off of, J. 'Masked asshole with knives killing my guys at night' is not much to go off of."

In response, Junior turned to the white Malachite and jerked his head toward the table, a brutish order to speak.

The girl, for her part, acted far more authoritative than her boss. Chin high, eyes level and fearlessly meeting those of the other men and women at the table. Roman knew the poise was born of misguided arrogance-misguided because the twins were nowhere near as powerful and skilled as they thought they were. They'd gotten their asses handed to them by another teenage girl, some random big-boobed blonde that decided to walked in and trashed the twins and a ton of Junior's men for whatever reason, only a few weeks ago. And the other night they apparently got much more than their asses handed to them… An ass and a half? Hm. Roman needed to figure out a good phrase for that.

The arrogant girl cleared her throat. "We know he's white-skinned. Gray hair, long. The mask doesn't cover much. He's good with a blade, but not _that_ good." Roman raised an eyebrow at that. The scar on her sister was testament otherwise. She continued, "He's better at throwing them. He's got a powerful semblance, though. We thought it was just some sort of recall effect on his knives, calling them back to him, but when we put a few cuts on him, he… recalled himself?" She glanced at her sister, getting a nod of confirmation.

"We think he can rewind himself and objects he's imbued with his aura in time. All of the damage we did to him was und-"

Roman waved a hand and cut her off. "Yes, yes. Fascinating. Utterly irrelevant, though. Wh-"

"Irrelevant?" the white Malachite cut in, expression haughty and offended.

"Did you just interrupt me?" Roman asked. He kept his tone even, almost friendly. He knew that scared people more than his 'dark and dangerous' voice. He wasn't all that great at that.

Plus, the friendly tone made him come across a bit sociopathic. Which was all for the better, it kept people unsteady when dealing with him.

The Malachite girl flinched and broke his gaze, but just shifted her glare to the table.

Until a year ago his question would have been met with stammering and apologies. Roman knew what was missing-Rhea, and her two massively intimidating wolves. One of the wolves was still alive, though missing a leg and her master. Roman couldn't keep Palatine behaved in a setting like this like Rhea had with her semblance, and the missing limb would be a poetic sign of weakness more than anything else.

His clock was ticking. He'd need to work out an exit plan soon.

"I do believe she did, Roman," Slate said coldly, eyes piercing the girl in question.

She kept her gaze on the table.

"I'll think of some suitable horror to inflict on her later," Roman assured him. _That_ made her eyes widen, and she chanced a glance at Roman. When she met nothing but impassiveness, she looked to her sister, who matched her fear, and then at Junior, who motioned her back.

Roman no longer cared enough to follow. "Map of the city," he ordered the table at large. "Now."

Slate immediately motioned to one of his men behind him who handed him a leather, string-bound binder. He ruffled through it for a moment, not because he needed to search for what he was looking for, but because the map he was looking for was tucked under other papers.

He laid the map out and pushed it to the middle of the table, giving a single twist of the wrist to align it properly with the edges. Vale City and the outer edges of the neighboring cities to the south and east were depicted on the white paper, the yellows and blues of roads criss-crossing the black outlines of major buildings. The ocean was depicted in a lighter blue to the west, Beacon Bridge and Beacon itself stretching up to the north.

Roman gave a nod to Slate. He pulled a pen from inside his coat and thumped it down in front of Junior. "Where?"

"Where what?"

Roman rolled his eyes. Honestly, how a man this dense ever came to lead _anything_ was astonishing to him.

"Where were the _attacks_, genius?"

Scowling, Junior grabbed the pen and made drew-almost chiseled, with how hard he pressed down-five large circles. They were too large and inaccurate to be all that useful if Roman needed to know the precise locations, but he didn't, and this would be enough to illustrate his point.

Five circles, four of which were in Dancetown and at the edge of Dancetown and the Docks, Roman's own territory. It had been Junior's men that had been attacked there, though, trucking a shipment of cocaine and flake to the docks that was supposed to be boated over to Vacuo.

Roman had been pissed to lose that shipment. It cost him a lot of cred with the Sand Kings, and they were a lucrative business partner.

He twirled his cane at his side. "Now, Junior, let's do some brainy analysis here. What do you see here?"

"That the fucker likes to pick on me and mine."

Roman exhaled slowly through his nose. "Yes, and why would that likely be?"

Junior shrugged insolently. "Dunno. Maybe I fucked his mom."

'_Don't shoot him, Roman. Don't shoot him.'_

Roman's silence told Junior he should keep guessing. "Maybe he decided he doesn't like the smell of flake. I dunno. That shit smells funny. I dunno."

"Say 'I dunno' one more time and I'll have Matriarch rip your spine out through your throat."

Matriarch smiled.

Junior gulped.

"I d-uh, I'm not sure boss… why would… what was the question?"

Roman sighed again. He couldn't felt Junior for losing his train of thought-if it could be called that-now. Fear tended to do that.

"He's targeting drug deals and a sweatshop in this county-your territory. One case for this could be, as you said, he's got a grudge against you."

"For fucking his mom."

"... Yes, Junior, for fucking his mom."

"And now he wants to take over my business for revenge." Junior nodded like he'd happened upon some grand epiphany. "Makes sense."

'_Idiot.'_

"Junior, on all of these attacks, after he killed your men what did he do with the product?"

"Burned it, why?"

"If he wanted to take over your business, why would he _burn_ perfectly good product instead of selling it."

Junior blinked. "I dunno, 'cause he's a moron?"

'_Someone in this scenario certainly is.'_

"Shall I rip his spine out now, Lord Roman?" Matriarch asked in her stilted, overly formal, overly _weird_ cadence.

"Oh, he did say 'I dunno' again, didn't he?"

"What?! No, I didn-no! Wait, boss I d-"

"Shut up, Junior." Roman turned to Matriarch, facing her fully and meeting her eyes to address her like he knew she expected. "Hold off for now, I _think_ I'm about to get through to him."

She dipped her chin in a nod.

He turned back to the oaf. "Junior, he's burning drugs because he doesn't like drugs."

"Then what's he want my business for?" \

"He doesn't, you idiot! He's a fucking vigilante!" Junior blinked uncomprehendingly at him. "He's trying to rid Dancetown of your men and your drugs. Why?"

"Uh… 'cause he hasn't had a taste that would change his mind?"

Roman pushed out his lower lip in acquiescence and tilted his head side to side. "Sure, maybe. But the reason he's doing it _here_-" he jabbed the circled areas on the map with a finger "-is probably because he fucking _lives_ there."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

Roman glanced at the other people seated at the table. Briar was completely uninterested in the current conversation. His hands were clasped in front of him as he leaned on and looked down at the tabletop. Roman was _fairly_ certain he was watching himself flex. But maybe that was just his bias against muscled brutes. Slate and Matriarch were both attentive. Slate gave Roman a nod, while Matriarch stared coolly at Junior, making little effort to hide her disdain for the man.

Junior wasn't paying attention to her anyway.

"How does that help me?" he asked.

Resisting the urge to swing his cane full force into the man's lower jaw, Roman growled, "_Because_, nimrod, it means you can _find_ him. If he lives in Dancetown, he lives in an apartment. Have some of your mooks posted outside the complexes-there's only five or six of them-and have them wait to see if he shows up. You can also scatter some guys along the roofs in your territory, have them watch to see if they can spot him moving around the city at night. If you can attack him when he's not expecting it, you should be able to take him. Your two circus acrobats apparently cut him, so I imagine it can't be _that_ hard."

The two twins bristled at the comment. The red one opened her mouth to say something, but when Roman narrowed his eyes at her she immediately clamped it shut.

"Now, enough of your idiocy. Matriarch," he turned, bowing his head respectfully (even though he didn't _have_ much respect for her, but this was how to work her), "have you anything to report for the week?"

Matriarch inclined her head. "Nothing negative. We've acquired a new recruit, sent from the Branwen Tribe in Mistral. Seer-" she gestured to one of her two attendants "-has confirmed there will not be anything of import for our congregation in the next week. The Councilman of Business will be leaving the city within three days, moving north."

"Atlas."

'Seer' nodded. "Most likely."

Interesting. Roman would need to look into that. Whatever deals Carson Winchester was looking to make in Atlas would likely have at least _some_ impact on their operations, particularly Slate's.

"The Councilwoman of Civil Service will be subject to some sort of violence later in the week. A mugging, perhaps, or an assassination attempt. We'll know more particulars when we get closer to the day. She will come out relatively fine, though."

That might be an issue. Neither Roman nor any of the parties here would be launching an attack on a councilwoman, so it was a third party. Hopefully nothing more than an opportunist mugger, but if there was organization behind it, Roman would need to figure out where it was coming from.

The likely security crackdown that would result from the attack would be a nuisance for a few weeks, though.

Roman nodded back. "Any luck on getting Seer to meet Ozpin face to face? Or Rustheart, or that sword-scythe fucker?" It would be nice to know when and where those three would be days early.

Matriarch shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. We do not know how to find this…" she waved a hand, "'sword-scythe' man. And the other two are mostly holed up in Beacon, as far as we can tell."

'_Damn.'_

"Maybe we can manufacture some sort of crisis that they'll need to respond to, draw them out, let Seer see them?"

"Perhaps that could work," Matriarch replied. "It would have to be a significant crisis to ensure the response of such individuals."

At that, Briar loudly cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Roman.

Roman rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, Mountain Glenn. I know."

Briar straightened up. "Taurus believes this venture can be mutually beneficial. We can supply vast amounts of money and chaos in exchange for your men and resources."

"I'm sure it _would_ be mutually beneficial."

"Then why are you dragging your feet?" The question came out as a growl that made Roman and Slate both raise their eyebrows.

'_Impudent.'_

"Because, _Briar_, as I've told you before, if Taurus wants to talk business with me, he needs to do it himself, face to face."

The beefcake scowled. "You can communicate just as effectively through me. Or a scroll."

"It's not about communication, it's about respect."

Roman noticed Briar bite back a retort. Interesting. The terrorist asshole likely _didn't_ respect Roman, probably saw him as just a petty criminal. No matter. The feeling was mutual. Anarchists like the White Fang were more detrimental than anything else, though the chaos they created might be channeled to help Roman's business, if handled correctly.

"When Taurus decides he's not too busy for a four hour trip into the city to meet, I'll be happy to discuss his operation with him."

Briar scowled.

Roman turned away, content to dismiss the man to put him in his place. "Anything else, Matriarch?"

She shook her head. "No, Lord Roman."

The True were weird as fuck, Matriarch was _extra_ weird, but damn did he enjoy being called 'Lord Roman'.

"And you, Slate?"

This was what he'd been waiting for. Every week, in every one of these meetings, Roman had a coiled anticipation that Slate might finally have some news.

"Good news on many fronts, Roman."

'_Does that mean…?'_

"We've located both the persons of interest you and Junior have been looking for."

"You found him? You found my son?" Roman's excitement peaked, and Junior also sat up straighter, eager for his own information.

Slate smiled, an expression that didn't quite reach his cold eyes. "We did. Or rather, we found where he will be in a few weeks."

"How do you mean?"

"We've not been able to locate where he's being kept now, but we've confirmed he's now officially enrolled in Beacon, under your late wife's maiden name."

Roman fell into a coughing fit. "W-kkkeh!-what? Ozpin's _training_ him?"

"Indeed. It seems young Remus will be a huntsman."

'_What the _fuck?' Rhea had trained at Beacon, graduated, and then gone rogue and ended up as one of the two leaders of Vale City's criminal underground-she'd liked to joke that she was the 'top dog'. And now Ozpin was going to be training her son? Was he an idiot?

"Okay. Okay okay okay. So we know where he'll be. So we just need to break him out once he's there."

Slate raised an eyebrow. "You want to break him out of _Beacon_?"

Roman blinked. "Well, duh. I want my son back."

To that, Slate made an expression of acceptance. "Their classes begin on the twelfth. We were not able to confirm exactly when or where he will be staying within the university, but he will certainly be on the grounds on and after the twelfth."

With a sigh, Roman leaned back in his chair, a tangled knot of a thousand emotions that had been tied up for a year and a half finally loosening. He knew where his son would be. Soon, Roman and Romulus would go rescue Remus, and all the Torchwicks would be together again. All the ones that were left.

"And my info?" Junior butted in.

"Ah yes, the teenage girl with the fiery fists and killer cleavage," Slate said dryly.

Junior nodded, not realizing he was being mocked.

"We got images of her outside your club and ran them by my contacts in the VPD. Her name is Yang Xiao-Long. Also a soon-to-be student at Beacon Academy."

'_Fucking huntsmen.'_

Junior nodded again, staring off into space. Likely imagining some horrific revenge for his embarrassment that he'd never be able to enact. The boobed bitch already proved she can level Junior's men and his want-to-be huntress-level rogues.

If he wanted, Roman supposed he could allow Junior to employ Neo's services for a hit. He didn't want to, though. Openly assaulting and possibly murdering was a good way to get all the police and huntsmen in the city on their asses.

Wait…

"Junior, what exactly do you want to do with this girl?"

"Teach her not to fucking mess with me," the man answered darkly.

"Yes, yes, but how? You gonna kill her?"

"If that's what it takes for her to learn her lesson."

Roman wanted to point out that if she was dead, her learning the lesson would be irrelevant, but it didn't matter. And it would still set an example for others. And…

"Very well. Keep me updated of everything you do about it. I might be able to provide assistance, and I want to know what's going on with that either way."

"Okay," Junior answered. No questions, no suspicions of Roman's motivations.

"That'll be it for now, then. See you all next week. Matriarch, please stay a moment."

She raised an eyebrow in response and glanced at Junior, staying seated.

Junior stood, leaving the room after clapping Roman's shoulder and saying, "See ya, boss."

Yeah, Roman had no worries of betrayal from him.

The Malachite twins skulked after their boss, giving Roman insolent glares in the process. They were irrelevant, though, so it mattered little.

Slate stood from his chair and gave Roman a nod. "Roman."

Roman nodded back. "Slate. Always a pleasure. Your payment for the information will be in your account by midnight tonight."

The man smiled. "Glad to hear it. If you need assistance with obtaining locations or schedules for your boy, you need only ask. See you next week."

Roman knew that wasn't _strictly _true. He'd need to ask _and_ pay. But that was par for the course in this line of work, and it was a price he'd be happy to pay if it turned out he needed the help.

Briar stayed seated as Slate and his men filed out. The brute's arms were crossed, and he glared at Roman.

"The White Fang still has business to discuss with you."

Roman's lips curled up, but it was more a barring of fangs than a smile. "Then tell Adam Taurus I'll be happy to discuss it with him when he arrives."

After a long, pointless stare down in which Roman knew Briar was vainly trying to establish himself as the alpha, the man stood with a grunt and stalked out, pushing his chair in with a violent shove before he left.

It was just Roman and the True left now.

"Animals," muttered the one who hadn't spoken yet tonight, Chorus.

Matriarch raised a hand to silence the woman while Roman bristled. Matriarch… Roman knew she felt the same about faunus, but she also knew Roman didn't. He'd _married_ one. Somehow their two boys had ended up entirely human, however the hells that worked, but he'd never had issue with faunus. He'd grown up in the slums with them. Many of his friends had been part animal of one kind or another, back when he could still have friends.

Roman decided to let it go. Nothing about the True's views would change from his protests, and all three of them could kill him in horrible ways if they so chose. Well, maybe not Seer. But Chorus could have him screaming incoherently for hours and Matriarch could kill him with his own semblance, so it was best to just leave it be.

"You want to use the girl as the crisis," Matriarch said, reading into what Roman had been contemplating.

"I do. Surely Ozpin and his crew of assholes will find one of their students getting attacked in the streets reason enough to come out of their castle."

Matriarch nodded. "It likely would. And that would mean the end of Junior. They and the police would not take the death of one of their 'child heroes' lightly."

Roman shrugged. "If it gets us a bead on Ozpin and Rustheart and sword-scythe asshole, then that would be worth it."

That got a raised eyebrow from the coveness. "You would sacrifice your most loyal, though admittedly inept, servants to get a _chance_ at a _path_ to revenge?"

Roman kept his expression impassive. "Yes."

"Very well. Inform us when Junior makes his play. We will have Seer wait in Dancetown once he does."

"I will. Lastly, what's in store for me this week?" Their meetings always ended this way, Roman asking for the precognitives impressions for him. Seer never gave him much that wasn't direct threats to his life, as he might change his actions based on other information and therefore make what she'd seen incorrect, but it still helped to know the general feelings he could expect.

Seer stepped forward. "I could not see very far past today-"

"Do I die?!"

Seer and Matriarch both smiled. "No, Lord Roman," Seer answered. "You will just experience a lot in the coming hours, and periods of intense action and emotion limit the depth to which I can see."

"Oh. Right, you've mentioned that."

"I have."

"So what happens tonight."

"Conflict. Violence. You will be stressed, then relieved, then frightened, all in quick succession. I imagine it has something to do with what you're going to do with the information Mister Slate has just provided."

Roman raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What am I going to do with it?"

Seer spread her hands out, palms up, a nonverbal 'I don't know.' "Something in the inner city, and I sense a familial bond and contentment from you beforehand."

So he'd bring Romulus. Yeah, that made sense.

"Okay, well does what I'm doing turn out okay?"

"Presumably. You will fall asleep tonight with a feeling of determination and conviction."

Good.

"Anything else?"

Seer shook her head. "Nothing else of consequence within the next fifty to sixty hours. Beyond that I cannot see."

Roman nodded. "Your insights are appreciated, as always, Seer."

She gave him a curtsy as Matriarch stood to leave.

"Until next time, Lord Roman."

He smiled.

Now he was alone. He sat in silence for a few long minutes, continuously following trails of hopeful thoughts but cutting them off before they could reach a conclusion.

He knew where Remus would be. Beacon. Only a few miles and weeks from here and now, he'd have both of his twins again, and then they could figure out a way to leave this city behind and sta-

'_No, Roman. You don't have him yet.'_

Getting his hopes up was foolish. He needed to stay focused on getting Remus back, not on what life would be like after. If he allowed himself to daydream about being a happy family again, there was a good chance he'd lose it completely.

And soon, vengeance. He'd put the sword-scythe asshole that killed his wife into the ground, and the 'hero of Molvane' that helped him do it. Then, if he could pull it off, he'd kill the asshole that sent them, too. That was reaching a little far, though, most likely. Ozpin wouldn't be where he was today if he was a pushover, and he likely wouldn't venture into the city to deal with Junior himself.

One step at a time, though.

He pulled out his scroll and called Romulus. Three rings later, the dial noise cut off.

"Hey Pops, what's up?"

Roman smiled. "Found your brother."

"Oh _shit_, really? Where is he? Do we need to set up a prison break?"

"No, Rommy. Chill. He's going to Beacon in a few weeks."

"... What, like Mom did?"

"Yeah, like Mom did." It hurt to think about, that Remus would be walking those same halls Rhea had spent four years of her life in. It was a connection to his wife that Roman would never get to have.

"Okay… So are we breaking him out? Or do we just let him graduate like Mom did and then he'll come back? Orrr…"

"No, Rommy. We're gonna go fucking get him."

"Nice!"

Roman smiled. "Call Neo. W-"

"_Nice!_"

Roman rolled his eyes. He knew his son had the hots for Neo. Understandable-she was attractive and his age… and incredibly flexible. Roman wanted to admonish the boy, warn him that killer femme fatales are girls to stay away from, but… Roman had married one. It would be the pot calling the kettle black.

"We need her to pick up something from City Hall for us. Tell her to meet us there."

"What are we getting?"

Roman's eyes drifted over to the map still on the table, to the little island just north of the city proper.

"Blueprints of Beacon."

* * *

Roman drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he watched the front entrance of City Hall. It was late evening, the sun disappearing behind the skyline to the west. Early enough that City Hall was still open, but late enough that their getaway would likely have the cover of night.

Romulus hummed excitedly in the seat next to him, tossing a hand gun back and forth between his hands. Like his twin brother, he had his father's read hair and green eyes, but his mother's darker complexion. Unlike his brother, he was bulky, muscular where Remus was thin. He was also confident and brash, where Remus had always been shy and scared.

Roman wondered if Remus had changed at all in the past eighteen months, then hated that he had to wonder that about his own son.

'_They'll pay for this.'_

One of the back doors of the nondescript sedan they'd stolen from a few streets over popped open and Neo slipped into the back seat.

Rommy turned to smile at her. "Sup, cutie?"

She winked at him with a teasing smile so perfect she _had_ to practice that shit in front of a mirror all day, then turned to Roman questioningly.

"Alright, Neo. We need you to go in there, work some magic, and come out with the blueprints of Beacon."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I know, there are a lot of buildings in Beacon, but grab as many as you can. Focus first on any living quarters-dorm buildings or team houses or whatever the fuck they live in there." Rhea had told him stories of Beacon, but he forgot the details. He just remembered that she'd lived with her team, which she'd hated, and that there were other people nearby a lot to play pranks on.

"We'll wait for you here. Once you get back to the car, if you're being pursued, we'll run speed like a bat out of hells this way-" he pointed to the side street to their right that they were parked next to "-and I'll trigger the bombs to block off the road so we can make a clean getaway. We'll head under Tombstone Bridge, dump the car in the river, and slip into the service tunnels for the subway. Cool?"

Romulus grinned widely. "Cool!"

Neo just nodded, once. Quick, professional.

Roman liked her.

"Try to be fast."

She rolled her eyes and slipped back out of the car.

A silence filled the car. It might have felt normal in other circumstances, but the strange car and tense circumstances made Roman feel anxious. He had no doubts they'd succeed here, but he still got an antsy feeling crawling over his skin whenever he was out in the open breaking the law.

Not that he'd ever let that show. No sir, Roman Torchwick had developed a persona as the sassy, swaggy, overconfident crime lord of Vale, and he intended to keep that going, even with his son.

"Ten bucks she gets in by hitting on some dude," he teased Rommy with a grin.

Romulus just raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think it has to be a _dude_?"

"Oh, does she-ya think?"

Rommy shrugged. "She's almost got the bisexual anime girl haircut. I could see it."

"Huh. Well, fine then. Ten bucks she gets in by hitting on some dude _or dudette_."

Rommy tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Seems like a pretty easy way for me to lose ten bucks. Not sure why I'd take that bet."

Well, at least he knew she was a manipulative flirt.

"What do you think Remus is up to right now?" Romulus asked, changing the discussion with a question he'd been asking his dad at least once a day for the past eighteen months.

For once, Roman finally had some sort of basis of information to give an answer.

"Well, he's getting ready to go to Beacon. So probably prepping a weapon of some sort."

"You think he's got some goofy 'Aha! My sharp stick is also a gun!' weapon now?"

Roman chuckled at that. "Dunno. Can't really see Remus competing with other huntsmen in a sharp stick fight, you?"

With a shake of his head, Rommy came to his brother's defence. "No, but in a gun fight he'd wreck 'em all!"

That was true. Rhea had trained them both since they were old enough to stand, and the two and displayed very different skill sets. Romulus was strong, a powerful melee fighter, but Remus, while technically skilled, never matched him. He never had that viciousness needed to actually _hit_ his opponent-he'd always hold back, always soften his blows. Always. He was a softy. But he was also an incredible shot. He could shatter beer bottles from the other side of the junkyard from when he was twelve years old.

"Damn straight," Roman agreed proudly, putting his knuckles out for his son to bump.

"I wonder if there's any hot girls at Beacon for him to hang with," Romulus wondered. Typical Romulus, that _that_ was where his brain immediately went.

"Well Mom _was_ the hottest, and she went to Beacon, so I'd imagine they have good taste."

"Ewwww, Daaad!"

"What?!"

"You can't call Mom hot! That's gross!"

Roman rolled his eyes. "You're right. I married the ugliest woman ever. Explains why you look the way you do."

"Hey!"

Roman smiled past the ache in his heart, ignoring the Rhea-sized hole in it. "So, thoughts on how to rescue Remus?" he asked his son.

"What do you mean?"

"We'll need to stake the place out, probably. I have no idea what the security measures are outside the school. But they're probably tight, so we'll probably need to go in guns blazing, bust into the dorms, pull him out and scram before they can do anything."

He knew the leader of the Branwen tribe was a Beacon graduate. He could have Matriarch reach out, get details about the security. But it would probably be outdated information. After that crazy candy shop owner attacked the school a couple years ago and tried to kill Ozpin, they'd probably beefed up the security.

Neo could probably get in and spy around. She could _probably_ get in and sneak Remus out, but… no. No, Roman wanted to be the one to show up and save his boy. _And_ getting to blow up some of Ozpin's stuff would be a big plus.

"You still want to do that job grabbing the new Atlas super mechs when they come in November?" Rommy asked, now playing a game on his scroll. That ridiculous Grimm Crush game Roman had never understood.

"The Paladins? Yeah, why?"

Rommy shrugged. "Maybe we wait for that, get ourselves a super mech, and then bust in during winter break? Less kids around to get hurt, and maybe some of the professors will be gone too."

Hm. A good idea. A part of Roman _wanted_ the professors to be there, two in particular, but he didn't harbor any delusions that he'd be able to kill Rustheart or Ozpin even with a 'super mech'. Maybe if he made use of those plans that Atlesian scientist Watts had sold to him, the advanced Dust weaponry. Maybe Slate could figure out how to put those weapons on the Paladins they were going to steal.

"I'm not sure I want to wait that long," he answered his son.

Rommy gave him a knowing, empathetic smile. "I know, Dad. But we're probably only gonna have one shot at this. We need to make sure it works. _And_ we get the added bonus of blowing shit up with Atlas tech!"

"Hm… When did you get so wise?"

"About seventeen and a half years ago."

"Ya don't say? Hm. Wonder why I'm just noticing now."

His son narrowed his eyes at him. "You know, if I asked Neo to kick your ass, she probably would."

Roman smiled. "Ah, but _could _she?"

"Yeah! She kicks _all_ the ass!"

Roman inspected his fingernails. "But my semblance, though."

"... Shit."

They continued to banter back and forth while they waited for Neo to come back out. Roman enjoyed these moments, chatting with his son like a friend instead of a father. He much preferred it to having to be a father figure. Plus, it helped ease the tension in his shoulders, that unshakable worry that this would finally be the day he got caught and thrown into a hole in Faulksen Penitentiary. 'The Dungeon'.

Hiss own father had died in those halls, and he had little doubt he'd suffer the same fate if he were locked up. There were a _lot_ of inmates that were where they were because Roman had sold out, baited, or backstabbed them on his way to the top.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of gunshots.

'_Shit.'_

They were coming from inside City Hall. Single shots, high pitched. Pistols. Likely security guards.

Neo had been caught.

'_Shit shit shit shit shit.'_

"Dad!" Romulus slapped his arm, then point up to the roof of the building they were watching. Neo's silhouette raced across the rooftop, her weird, somehow pseudo-indestructible umbrella open and spinning behind her, shielding her from the gunfire from the two guards that Roman could barely see at the entrance to the stairwell.

"Shit."

He put the car into gear and drove toward the building, their escape route now behind them. The T-juncture in front of City Hall was too trafficked for him to get in front of the building, so he stopped right at the intersection and jerked into the parallel parking spot next to them.

"Open the door," he ordered Romulus.

No details, but his son knew what he meant. The boy turned and reached into the back seat, pulling the back door handle and shoving the door open with an awkward, twisted shove.

Above them, Neo spotted the car. With a running leap she dove off the two story roof, parasol above her to catch the wind like that one weird magic nanny from that one movie. It wasn't _that_ effective at slowing her decent-because physics-but it helped a bit. She hit the ground and tumbled into a graceful roll, pink aura flickering around her from the impact. With a flourish, she transitioned into an arrogant _strut_, twirling her umbrella on her shoulder as she walked across the street, stopping traffic as drivers attempted not to hit her, slamming their horns in the process.

The guards that were shooting at her on the roof disappeared from Roman's sight, the angle not letting him see where they went. Probably rushing back downstairs to pursue.

As Neo walked up to the car, Roman was finally able to notice the long plastic tube that was strapped over her shoulder.

'_She got 'em.' _

She gave him a please smirk, stopping by the passenger door and leaning forward to look at Roman, consequently giving Rommy an ample view of her cleavage.

The boy mumbled something that Roman couldn't quite make out, but it sounded suspiciously like "So sexy".

Then the sirens sounded in the distance.

Neo immediately jerked up and looked off to the east.

"Get in the car, Neo!" Roman hollered, shifting the car back into drive.

She dove into the backseat and slammed the door closed, pulling her umbrella shut in the same motion.

"A little less showboating, please?" Roman grumbled, knowing full well he was a massive hypocrite for saying that.

The raised eyebrow he got from Neo and the snort from his son helped confirm that.

Whatever, they needed to move.

Tires screeching, he threw them into a u-turn, almost crashing into two different cars in the process. He turned into the side road down which they'd planted the earth Dust bomb just as a patrol car rounded the corner at the far end of the main street, lights flashing and siren blaring.

Roman focused on driving. This was a two lane road with medium traffic, meaning he had to do a lot of swerving and passing to maintain any sort of pace.

Pedestrians honked constantly as they passed, and Romulus was diligent in making sure each and every one of them got the finger.

"Grab the detonator!" Roman shouted to his son. They were coming up on the one-way little side alley where they'd set up the bomb. It was made for delivery trucks to bring in shit for the stores on either side of it, but it would serve to help their getaway h-

The sound of a constant, distant thunder approached, getting louder by the second.

'_Airship.'_

What the _fuck_? What the Crucible was this response time?

No matter. The bomb would still block off car pursuers. They just wouldn't be able to make it to the river in the car without the airship cutting them off. They'd need to improvise, lose the Falcon in this block. It should be doable-there were tight alleys and overhanging fire escapes criss-crossing the buildings. They could slip out of the Falcon's sight and sneak the rest of the way to the subway service tunnels on foot.

As he came to the decision, the Falcon came into view, banking over a building on their left and blasting them with the brightest flood light any man or faunice had ever seen. Like, holy _shit_, it was bright.

Roman instinctively raised an arm to shield his eyes, Romulus doing the same beside him with a surprised "Agh!" It was hard to see anything beyond the windshield like this, all color and contrast washed away.

"Fuck!"

He was _pretty_ sure that vaguely darker blur on the right was the entrance to the service road. He jerked the steering wheel one handed, and sped right into-

**CRASH!**

Welp. He'd misjudged that.

The car erupted through floor to ceiling windows that made up the outer facing wall of whatever building Roman had just driven them into. Roman slammed the breaks, but he'd been going to fast. Tires screeched, and they slammed into a wall of some sort hard enough that the front of the car crumpled, the air bags deploying with a _hsss-whoosh! _and punching Roman in the face hard enough that his head slammed back into the headrest and he was sure his neck would be stuck sideways for a week.

He'd forgotten to turn his aura on before the crash, so it _hurt_. A consequence of not having the years of training Rhea had had, training she'd imparted to Romulus, at least. She'd taught Roman, too, but his aura hadn't even even been unlocked until he met her at twenty-two, and by then it was a little late to learn how to keep his defenses up as instinctually as breathing the way huntsmen did.

He heard groaning and doors opening to his right.

'_Romulus.'_

He needed to make sure his son was okay. With a grunt of exertion that pained his ringing head, he shoved the airbag, collapsing the thick fabric. He stumbled out of the car. Struggling to keep his feet, he was once again blinded by the flood light from the Falcon, and now he could make out the sounds of screaming and running civilians, though they sounded muted to his ears.

'_Fuck, my head.'_

They were in a store, a coffee shop of the fancy, pretentious teen variety. The hood of the car had crumpled into the stone fixture that was the drink bar. A barista was cowering back away from Roman behind it, screaming. Near Roman's feet was another person, a teenage guy with round mouse ears, sprawled out on the floor in a way that made Roman think… no.

_Shit!'_

Had he hit them? Had he killed them? That would be bad. He'd killed before, but they'd all been other criminals, and he'd never done it in front of civilian witnesses. Execute a local gang leader in front of his men to make a point? Sure. It was business, and the cops didn't care too much. But vehicular manslaughter on a _kid_ during a high speed pursuit?

'_Shit.'_

"Dad!" someone screamed in his ear.

'_What? Who's-oh.'_

Right. Romulus was here.

"Dad!" he screamed again. "Come on, we gotta go!"

He was pulled along behind his son, once again shielding his eyes from the glaring flood lights, around the car and towards the back of the shop. Two cop cars screeched to a stop outside, and the abject _fear_ that filled Roman was enough to push him past his head pain and into functionality again.

Neo was holding the door to the restaurant's back room open. Roman and Romulus rushed through, followed closely by gun shots. Neo opened her umbrella and blocked the shots, though.

Roman took the lead, still having to hold his head with one hand while whipping his cane out to steady himself with the other. "Out the back, go!" he shouted, the noise creating a spike of pain he pushed aside.

The three of them burst out the back door, into the side road Roman had _meant_ to turn into. There was a dumpster a few feet further down into the alley where they'd stashed the earth Dust explosive. Good, they could still block off the cops and get away. Nothing had changed other than they were on foot a lot earlier than they'd planned to be.

Rommy and Neo, Roman noted, seemed perfectly fine. The benefits of aura protection.

They ran together down the narrow alley.

"You grab the deton-"

"Yeah!"

They passed the dumpster as the door they'd just come out of slammed open again. A cop, gun out.

Neo turned and backpedaled, giving them cover with her umbrella.

"Do it, Rom!"

The rumbling thrum of earth Dust activating vibrated the ground beneath their feet, and a fractal explosion of stone erupted from the left side of the alley across to the right, a jagged twelve foot tall barrier that blocked off their pursuers.

Well, most of them.

The Falcon hovered into view between the two buildings to their sides and above the wall they'd created, its blinding light flooding the alleyway. It sped forward and past them, stopping and turning to face them when it reached the far end of the alley. Now, if they wanted to run, they'd have to run _toward_ the airship.

"Freeze!" came a voice from a speaker. "Get down on your knees and put your hands on your heads or we _will_ shoot!"

Roman eyed the two miniguns on the wings of the Falcon, or at least what he could see of them with a white Dust powered _sun_ burning holes in his retinas. Those things would rip him apart in a second, and Romulus and Neo wouldn't last much longer.

'_Shit.'_

He needed to get rid of that floodlight. The problem was that, looking into it as he was right now, he couldn't really make it out against the sheer _whiteness_ of everything.

They needed outs. He glanced to either side.

There!

A path, a space between two buildings, about fifteen feet ahead of them to their left. It would take them out into the public streets again, but they could run down the street and duck back into the alley, as long as the Falcon lost track of them.

He thanked his lucky stars he'd loaded the air-and-earth Dust round into his cane instead of the fire round he'd always used to carry. He had a couple extras of each in his coat, of course, but if he went to load them now he'd get riddled with bullet holes before he could get one into the chamber of his cane.

His heart was slamming in his chest now, the fear that had been locking up his shoulders now driving him to _act_.

He brought his cane up, not making too much of an effort to aim because that would require blinding himself, and pulled the trigger that was subtly hidden in his 'weapon'.

With a _thoomp_ like a grenade launcher, the air-earth round-more a shell, really, because Roman's cane shot bullets big enough they were like canisters-arched away, the heavy weight of it causing it to dip sharply.

Roman was lucky as fuck, though, because it hit pretty much right where he'd wanted it to.

On impact, the shell exploded into a massive dust cloud on the airship's windshield, obscuring the pilot's view. Enough of the dirt showered down that a curtain hung in front of the light hanging off the underside of the craft, diluting the beam enough for them to see the ship clearly.

"Shoot the light!" he yelled at Romulus, already moving toward the path he'd noticed.

Romulus wasn't the marksman his brother was, and it took him three shots before the lens of the light shattered, the alley subsequently covered in darkness. After the loud, echoing gunshots, the quiet that followed felt thick.

Behind the stone wall came shouting voices. The cops were probably reacting to the gunshots.

Roman rounded the corner.

'_Shit shit shit shit shit!'_

There was a fence.

Beyond the fence, Roman could see the traffic and bustle of everyday drivers and pedestrians. People were moving curiously down the street, toward the corner where the three of them had crashed into the coffee shop. Some people further down the street in the other direction would likely be looking at the Falcon hovering above the buildings.

Something tugged him backwards. "What-"

Neo pushed him against the wall with her folded parasol, then grabbed Romulus' wrist and pulled him against it as well.

"Neo," Roman started, "what are y-"

She flashed her eyes at him.

Damn it, the whole mute thing _really _sucked right now.

She pointed at her heart.

'_Heart? What? Aura? OH!'_

Her fucking semblance. Roman was an idiot.

He gave her a nod.

"Neo, Dad, what-"

"Ssh!"

With a loud rumble that shook the air, the Falcon moved to get out of the dirt cloud, coming back to hover over the stone wall and look down the alley again. A few seconds passed, seconds that Roman held his breath for. Whatever Neo was doing, the pilot didn't seem to notice them.

Then a high pitched squeal filled the air, the miniguns spinning up, rotating so fast they just looked like a metal blur.

'_We're fucking dead.'_

Bullets started flying, the fire rate so fast it sounded more like a droning hum than a series of individual shots.

Flinching and squeezing his eyes shut, more out of instinct than any actual belief that that would save him, it took Roman a long moment to realize that was not, in fact, dead.

The sound of bullets chipping into a hard surface finally registered to him, a sharp _tchk tchk tchk tchk_! Roman opened his eyes slowly.

The airship was shooting the shit out of the stone wall.

'_Oh.'_

Roman took the momentary reprieve to look around. Soon alley would be full of policemen-from the sound of the sirens, there were definitely more than two or three officers now.

A bunch of tiny exits, passages formed by the spaces between the brick buildings, a constructional oversight that screamed that this was an old neighborhood. New shopping strips were all one interconnected building, no sketchy side alleys for illicit activities.

They wouldn't be much help now anyway. They could try to make a run for it, but the airship would surely see the movement, even without the flood light. And they needed to get half a mile down the road to reach the river and the tunnels that would lead to safety.

Running wasn't an option. So they could fight or they could hide. Fighting… they could probably take the cops on foot, between Neo and Romulus. Roman could _maybe_ take the airship with a couple blasts of fire dust, _maybe_. But it would take time, and the longer they fought the more reinforcements would come.

Hiding… Neo made hiding easy, if just became a question of how long. How long would the cops stay in the area trying to find them? They'd probably set up a grid, officers up and down the streets and at each corner, make it impossible for them to make it to the river, but eventually the net would have to thin. Neo could probably disguise them through at that point-she'd _have _to, as Roman's face was one every pig in Vale had been made to memorize.

Speaking of which…

"Neo, what are you making us look like right now?" he whispered to his minion.

She smirked at him, then looked pointedly off to the side. Roman followed her sight line to… a trash can?

"What?! You turned Roman-fucking-Torchwick into a _trash can_?"

She smirked again. Behind her, Romulus wrinkled his nose.

"Gross."

Neo rolled her eyes.

A sudden crack rang out, drawing their attention, and the airship's machine guns ceased firing, slowly winding down. A thin 'doorway' had been carved down the middle of the earth Dust wall, the crack that rang out signaling the collapse of that section.

Men in blue marched through the breach, guns raised as they fanned out. Flashlights on their guns or in their off hands sent cutting beams of white through the shaded evening gloom. Neo pushed a little hard against Roman, tensing.

Roman was nervous too.

One of the cops passed close to them, fifteen feet away… ten feet away… five feet away.

Never once did they get anything more than a passing glance.

Eight men, total, and the Falcon that was once again hovering above. They called out directions to each other, checking corners as they moved down the narrow street in formation.

One of them, a captain by the looks of his uniform, though it was hard to tell in this light, spoke into their walkie-talkie: "No visual on them. Leaving three to guard the service road, moving to sweep River Creek Apartments."

"Roger, setting up a grid to your west," came the staticy reply.

"Good." The captain removed his hand from the walkie. "Simmons, Solis, Verdis, stay here and keep checking. Rest of you, with me."

The man broke into a jog, heading further south down the service road, four of the others following. One of the three that was left grumbled something under his breath.

"Chill, Simmons," one of the others said in a low voice. "You don't want to get anymore on his bad side than you already are."

The one who had grumbled, Simons, presumably, fired back, "It's not _my_ fault! She didn't _tell me_ she was the captain's daughter!"

The one that had told him to chill snorted, and Roman struggled not to do the same. Neo's illusions did nothing to mask sound.

'_Alright, focus.'_

Only three cops here, an easy number to take. After that, they could follow after the other five, take them from behind, and then make a break for the river? And hope that Roman's two fire Dust shots would be enough to deal with the airship.

Above them, the Falcon circled. It had followed the other five cops a bit down the street, then stopped to turn and look back at the three in front of them. It made passes up and down the street, nose angled down as the pilot helped to look for the fugitives.

"Neo," Roman whispered, a careful eye on the blueshirts in front of them to watch for any sign they could hear him. "If we take these three out, can you make us look like them and make them disappear?"

Neo nodded, then made a point of touching his arm, then held out a hand, palm outwards like she was miming 'stop'.

Roman got the message. She could do it, but only if she could touch them or if they stayed still. Well the pilot would certainly find it strange if the officers below him all started holding hands…

"Okay. We'll stand still long enough for him to make a pass, then run after the others."

Neo nodded. Romulus quickly followed.

"'Kay."

"I'll use my semblance. Quick and quiet." Roman held out his hand for the other two to touch so they'd be immune to his power.

The three cops were all facing different directions, and none of them were towards Roman and his two companions. They were talking, though it didn't seem to have anything to do with what was going on. Making fun of Simmons for boning his captain's daughter, it sounded like.

'_Alright. Breathe, Roman. Clear head. No emotion, get rid of that panic.'_

He didn't have much aura, which consequently meant he couldn't use his semblance for very long, but it was a strong power regardless.

He waiting until the airship passed overhead and was heading south again, the back turned towards them. Frowning at the uncomfortableness, Roman 'reached inside' like Rhea had taught him, for that weird bubble he needed to burst to have the power of his semblance pour out.

_Poke. Poke. Pooooke-_

_Pop!_

His aura crashed out of him, the feeling making him instantly woozy, like he'd just lifted a lot of weights-not that he ever _would_ lift weights. The aura pooled out and spread, passing harmlessly around Neo and Romulus because he was touching them. The pale green light circled out, and Roman willed it to move towards the cops. The first was about ten feet away, and the three were arranged in a triangle all roughly five feet from each other, each watching different shadows.

'_Just a little furtherrrrr,' _Roman told himself, fighting that weird haze of mental exhaustion that came from spending aura.

One of the cops casually turned his head to inspect something and saw the light.

"What the-!"

He turned and pointed his gun at the ground just as it reached his feet.

Immediately the man sagged a bit, arms dropping and head hanging as the energy from his muscles and brain leaked away. The green light spread over him quickly.

Entropy. That's what Rhea had told him his semblance was. He created an area within which people tired _incredibly_ quickly, and it worked almost instantaneously on people that didn't have aura protecting them, which was most.

Including this cop, apparently.

The other two reacted as Cop One collapsed, falling to his knees. Roman consciously poured a little more of his aura into it, willing it to spread to the other two faster. He caught one, the Simons guy, before he could get away. The green light on the ground touched his foott, and the man teetered to the side as the light climbed over his shoe and up his calf, put off balance as the strength left one of his legs. He fell onto his face awkwardly, and the light of Roman's aura crawled over him like a swarm of ants or something.

Cop One fell to the side, now unconscious.

Cop Three, however, got back before Roman's light could reach him, raising his gun and tracing it toward its source. He'd just see a trash can, but…

'_Shit.'_

The gunshot that rang out had Roman convinced he was dead. He squeezed his eyes shut, and the blackness only reaffirmed for him that he was dead.

'_This is it. This is how I go out. Shot by some rando in a back alley for nobody but Neo and Romulus to remember, and Neo can't even tell my story. Now for an eternity of nothingness.'_

A weight was removed from his chest, and his knees buckled a bit.

'_Goodbye world.'_

He fell to his knees, his hand slipping from… wait, he was just holding one hand. Where was the other?

He tried to open his eyes…. and found that he could!

'_Oh shit, I'm not dead!'_

Neo had rushed forward and was currently beating the crap out of Cop Three, her protective aura mitigating the effect of Roman's entropy field. That was the weight that had left his chest-she'd stopped pressing him against the wall.

"Dad, turn off your semblance!"

'_Huh?... Oh.'_

_That_'s why his knees were buckling. He was tiring himself out from using his semblance to the point he might as well be entropy-ing himself. He cut off his aura, pulling what was left back into that weird little bubble in his heart, and the green light immediately disappeared.

Neo knocked out Cop Three, but Simmons was still conscious, and he started pushing himself to up as soon as Roman's semblance stopped affecting him. Romulus rushed up and gave the man swift kick in the head.

Yep, now he was out.

Roman staggered to his feet as he registered the loudening sound of the airship's engines. He looked up and-

'_Shitshithishishtishithshitasdjfl;ajsfdSHIT!'_

The Falcon's pilot had heard the gunshot and turned the ship around. The machine guns were whirring up.

A cruel twist, this, for Roman to think he was dead, realize he wasn't, and then immediately die anyway.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" Romulus bellowed, throwing himself to the side to try to get cover behind the building to their left. Neo opened up her umbrella and crouched behind it, bracing herself. That 'weapon' was freakishly durable, but there was no way it could withstand _this._

They were fucked.

_KKKRRRRRSHHHHHH!_

The sound of glass shattering filled the air. Roman glanced back up at the Falcon…

'_What?'_

The windshield of the cockpit had been completely obliterated of all glass, dozens of the shards impaling the pilot, who was slumped to the side and leaking blood like a fountain.

The Falcon tipped sideways and fell, crashing deafeningly into a building on the far side of the alley. The wall of the building folded like paper, and the grav Dust engines sent pieces of bricks pelting around the area. Roman raised his arms to shield his face.

It took a couple seconds before the damage to the airship was extensive enough that the machinery cut off. The engines died with a whine, and the alley went quiet.

'_... What...?'_

After a moment, Roman noticed that the glass shards from the cockpit were still up in the air, some dripping the pilot's blood down to the ground thirty feet below. As one, all the shard quickly darted through the air towards the roof of the building that Roman had just been leaning against.

'_... the fuck?'_

Roman stumbled back, trying to get a view of whatever was on top of the roof…

A woman. A silhouette of a woman stood up on the roof, the glass shards circling her like she was the center of her own silicon hurricane. She was looking down at Roman as well, though he couldn't see much of her face. All he could really tell was she had a nice body…

The woman spread her hands out by her sides and the glass shards gathered around them, coalescing on her arm like a pair of gauntlets. Once that was done, she stepped forward off the roof.

Roman twitched instinctually, taking a step forward and reaching out to catch her, but she didn't fall. She _floated _down, her arms still out wide, and it took a moment for Roman to realize she was using her weird glass-o-kinesis to control her fall.

'_What the fuck?'_

Moving over to Cop One's sprawled form, Roman picked up the guy's flashlight. He considered picking up the gun, too, but decided against it. Rommy had one already, and this lady could probably skewer him with the glass before he got a shot off.

He pointed the flashlight's beam up to the woman.

'_Wow.'_

She was _hot_.

Not that that was important. Roman wouldn't let that effect anything, but it might distract Romulus.

_Really_ hot.

Pale skin, long black hair, golden brown eyes. Young, definitely leaning more towards girl than woman, maybe eighteen or nineteen. She had a tattered coat over what looked like an equally tattered black dress, both looking so rough Roman thought she might have run through a forest or two or twenty in them before she got here. Her boots reflected that wear and tear, muddy and scuff.

And despite all that, she was still very clearly gorgeous.

The girl squinted in the face of the light, but didn't seem to care otherwise. Landed with a soft step in front of Roman, and Romulus and Neo walked up to his either side of him, both looking as confused and intimidated as he felt.

"Who are-"

"Are you Roman Torchwick?" the girl asked over him, her voice a liquid honey that would make bank on the sex phone lines.

"I am," he answered slowly, drawing out the last word with a hesitation he definitely _shouldn't_ be showing, considering he was the crime lord of this city. "And you are…?"

The girl's eyes darted between the three people in front of her. She was tense, fists clenched at her side, the glass 'gauntlets' coming apart as individual shards broke away from her arms and spun restlessly nearby.

"My name is Cinder. I… I was told to come to you for transport to the Crucible."

"The Crucible?" Roman repeated. "Why would I want to go there? Why would _you_?"

Cinder shook her head. "You don't need to go. I just need a ride, a boat or airship."

"Why?" Roman repeated.

Cinder shifted nervously, untrustingly. "My reasons are my own."

"Must be pretty batshit crazy reasons to make you want to go _there_," Romulus muttered.

The glare Cinder shot him was hot as fire.

Time for a change of subject.

"Who told you to come to me for this?"

Her eyes danced restlessly again. "Does… does the name Salem mean anything to you?"

"... No?"

She frowned at that. An awkward silence settled as neither of them knew what to say.

Off to their right, shouts sounded out. The cops were coming back, gunshots and explosions having caught their attention.

'_Shiiiiit.'_

He turned back to Cinder. "You got money?"

"N-no." Roman sighed, and she noticed and pressed on. "But I have power! It's… new to me, but I'm strong... She says I'm strong."

She? This Salem lady? It _was_ pretty clear that this girl was strong.

The shouts were getting louder.

Shit, there was no time for this.

"If you can help us get out of here, we can talk. We're gonna be doing some hits on local businesses 'cause we're gonna need Dust soon. If you can be some extra muscle for me for a bit, I'll see about getting you a ride."

Cinder frowned, and instead of answering, looked down at her hands. Between them, she called several shards of glass together to form a makeshift window, bits of it still smeared with blood. She stared at-or maybe _into_?-her little window for a long couple of seconds before nodding to herself.

"Okay," she said quietly.

Roman glanced at Romulus, who gave him a big shrug, then at Neo, who just raised her eyebrows.

"Okay," Roman repeated, sticking out his hand to shake.

Cinder flinched away, morphing her shards into glass daggers she gripped tightly. A bright red light from her palms showed her aura keeping her from getting cut by her own weapons.

Roman quickly pulled his hand back and raised them both in surrender as Neo and Romulus both reacted, dropping into fighting stances. "Relax! I just m… It's a deal, okay?"

Cinder nodded quickly and lowered her hands, the glass daggers releasing back into their individual pieces. "Sorry," she said quietly. "Just… don't touch me."

'_Okay. Some issues there.'_

"Can do, missy. So… let's get the fuck out of here, yeah?"

To his right, the shouting cops grew noticeably louder, and Roman turned to find that they'd rounded the corner they'd turned around earlier, a couple hundred feet away.

Gunshots, and bullets immediately started whizzing by them. Neo used her umbrella-shield again, stepping in front of Roman and Romulus.

Cinder waved her hand, almost dismissively, and the shards of glass flowed with the movement, rocketing out towards the advancing cops.

A couple seconds later, all five of them dropped to the ground.

'_Holy… fuck.'_

More sirens blared in the distance, getting closer, but Roman barely heard them. He stared at Cinder with a mix of awe and horror.

"Yeah… yeah, I think we can help each other." He smiled. "Come on!"

They ran together, towards the bodies of the cops that had just been murdered in a blink. The glass shards came back to Cinder as they ran, each one of them now slick with red.

"You got a place to stay?" Roman huffed to her.

When she shook her head, he wasn't surprised. Her clothing said as much.

"Where you from, Cinder?"

It took her a little bit before she decided to share. "Mistral. I was part of a tribe of bandits there."

'_Oh shit.'_

"The Branwen Tribe?"

"Yes, how-"

"Shit, are you Matriarch's new recruit? I don't want to fuck with her."

Cinder frowned as she ran. "I… yes, that's how I got here. They provided transport to Vale City for me. But they… they want to fuck with my head. I don't want any part of that."

"Oh, you met Chorus?"

"Yes."

"Shit."

This was bad. If the True found out he was smuggling their recruit out of the city…

"Shit," he said again. "We'll figure it out."

On his other side, Romulus spoke up. "Daaaad," he said admonishingly. "What are we doing? You always told me not to fuck with the True…"

He had. And he had no idea how much of this was shit the Matriarch already knew about. Seer had told him he'd succeed today, which he was technically about to, considering he was getting away and Neo had the blueprints they'd come for. But did she see this?

Probably not this, specifically. That wasn't how her power worked. But if she'd met Cinder, then she'd…

'_Shit.'_

"Did you meet Seer?" he asked the girl beside him, having to gasp for breath pretty embarrassingly as he did. He wasn't in the greatest shape.

"Who?" Cinder responded.

Good. Hopefully that meant Seer hadn't sensed Cinder in Roman's vicinity.

They ran a long way in silence, not running into any more cops on the way to the river. When they reached the bridge, Roman half run and half tumbled down the cement bank that lined the waterway, trying to stay low so passing cars wouldn't spot him. He stopped under the bridge, in front of the door that lead to the service tunnels, and leaned forward panting, hands on his knees.

Romulus, Neo, and Cinder weren't nearly as out of breath.

'_Damn kids.'_

Romulus watched him with an amused smirk, stealing quick glances at the attractive new addition to their troupe. Neo focused solely on Cinder, watching her suspiciously.

Cinder just watched Roman, impassive, waiting for him to speak.

When he could finally pull an actual breath into his lungs-and then another, and another-Roman straighten up. His sides were cramping, but he ignored it.

"Alright, Cinder. You can stay with us tonight-"

Rommy shot him a pleased grin that he pointedly ignored, and Neo's eyes widened in disbelief.

"-and we can talk about jobs in the morning. You look like you could use a bath and a good night's sleep right now."

Cinder's eyes glinted, almost watery. "Yes, _please_," she whispered.

Roman nodded. Good. Get her to appreciate him, get her indebted. If she was saying 'please' to him for things this early, that automatically made their relationship one of giving and taking, and it wasn't a far step from there to subservience.

"If you help us get the Dust we need for our big job in December and help us pull _that_ off, I'll get you a boat or an airship or whatever you need so you can make your weird journey to hell-on-Remnant, 'kay?"

"December?" she asked, frowning again.

"Yeah, that an issue?"

"Sh-she…" Cinder recreated her mirror in her hands and looked down at it, but that lack of lighting under the bridge and the fact that the shards were _covered_ in blood, even after their run, meant she had to squint and turn it constantly to try to… find _whatever_ it was she was looking for.

Apparently she failed, because she looked back at him answerless and unsure.

"She told me to get to her as soon as possible. C-can I give you an answer in the morning?"

'_Get to her in the _Crucible_? Who the fuck lives _there_?'_

Romulus voiced his thoughts without any compunctions. "Nobody lives on the Crucible, babe. The Grimm kill _everyone_, everybody knows that."

Cinder just shook her head.

"... Okayyyy," Roman intoned. "Sure, you can give an answer in the morning. Come on."

If she wanted to go get herself killed in that no-man's-land, that was fine with Roman. He would get some value out of her before then, though.

"Neo, let me see those blueprints real quick." He wanted to see what she'd gotten.

He pulled them out of the plastic tube and unfurled them. There was a brief moment of annoyance where he tried to keep the pages from rolling back together with one hand and shine the flashlight on it with the other.

"Gimme that," Rommy told him, already reaching out to snatch the flashlight from him.

Two handed, he was able to hold the maps open, and he pinned them up to the wall for him and Romulus to inspect.

'_Excellent.'_

Dorm A, Dorm D, Cafeteria, Dorm C. He flipped through all the pages Neo had managed to get.

Beacon Tower.

He raised an eyebrow, taking his time to inspect this one….

There. 'Headmaster's Office'. A floor above that was 'Headmaster's Quarters', and the eight rows below it were all labeled 'Professor's Quarters.' He looked at Rommy, who grinned maliciously back and nodded.

"Oh yeah, we're gonna need a loooot of Dust."


	16. Thaw 2-1

**Sorry for the delayed update! I've been too out of it from my nerd high from End Game and the Battle of Winterfell this past weekend. Like ermahgerd. Sooooooooo awesome. **

**Hope you enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

Weiss gently scrubbed off her face, the cleansing pad doing wonders to get rid of the icky, sticky feeling from the light sheen of sweat she'd accumulated during her run. She rinsed it off with cold water, relishing the refreshing coolness on her skin. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she made some alterations to her hair, tucking a couple loose strands behind her ear, but leaving one to flow elegantly down the side of her temple. She used her finger to add a bit of a twirl to it, though the curl quickly dissipated.

'_Grr.'_

She glanced at the curling iron, internally debating whether or not this one silly curl was worth the effort of waiting for the device to heat up.

Not really.

She adjusted the decorative spiked crown of silver in her ponytail, then gave herself one last once over.

Clear, pale skin, glossed lips, a small amount of light blue eyeshadow. She was wearing a blouse similar to the one Ruby had liked-the one whose color-shifted clone they were going to pick up for Ruby today. The collar on this one was higher, and didn't fold down like the other. It was a light off-white color with a thin, shiny silver zipper instead of buttons. She had a light blue short cape pinned by a silver brooch in the stylized Schnee snowflake design pinning it together at the center of her collarbone, the fabric draping down to the middle of her shoulder blades. A high-waisted flared skirt in a deep, dark blue accentuated her figure, and casual, open-toed white heels completed the look.

She looked nice.

The tiny, flitty feeling of pride in her looks made her smile. Her parents were, all in all, pretty awful, but they'd given her good genes at least.

Her smile made her mood dampen, though. It looked so small and insincere. She tried to smile wider, but… no, the way her cheeks dimpled and her eyes creased didn't look right at all. She slowly lowered the smile, trying to find a nice spot where it looked genuine but didn't add too many weird lines to her face.

She couldn't find one, but at this point she felt like maybe she'd been staring at her face for too long and wouldn't like anything.

Maybe she should show teeth? She had nice teeth. She parted her li-

Nope. That wouldn't do at all.

Why was it so hard for her to look happy?... Admittedly, it was a largely unfamiliar feeling, but she _had_ been happy before, and she inexplicably felt incredibly happy over this past week.

But in the mirror she still felt like she looked dead inside.

'_Fuck me.'_

She took a deep breath. The happy mood that she'd built up had been shattered by the mirror. This always happened. She looked at herself in the mirror and got incredibly happy at how pretty she was, but then she looked too long. There was always something wrong, something that made her imperfect-a tiny pimple that shouldn't exist, a tired streak of purple under her eyes, this thing with her smile.

Why did she always do this? She knew she did it, she knew she should stop looking at the mirror, that she-

"Wei-eiss! You done in there? I gotta get reaaaady!"

Weiss rolled her eyes at her partner's cheerful voice. The girl had gone from sleeping to bouncing-off-the-walls-in-excitement instantaneously when Weiss had come back from her run.

She pulled open the do-

"Weee!"

Ruby crashed into her and gave her a quick, tight hug.

"Wow, you look so nice." Ruby looked Weiss up and down. "I'm gonna go change!"

Weiss was left blinking at petals as the closet door slammed closed. Sounds of draws thumping came through, and Weiss rolled her eyes again and walked out, opting to worry about the awful mess Ruby was probably making in her hyperactive excitement later.

Yang and Blake were both up. Blake was getting ready in their bathroom while Yang was still lying in bed, blinking sleepily. She'd been chatting with Ruby, but now it was just her and Weiss in the room.

No awkward silence, though. Yang started a conversation as quickly and naturally as she would with her sister.

"Peanut's right-you _do_ look nice," she complimented.

Weiss blushed and walked to her desk, straightening her pens and pencils, nudging Sir Writes-a-Lot-uh, her tiny knight statue-a bit.

"Thank you."

"Mm." Yang rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. "Blake says she wants to go check out the Library of Vale today. You wanna head into the city together?"

Weiss blinked. "Oh! Sure. I was going to stop by a coffee shop before we went to the boutique. You want to go there together and then split up?"

Yang nodded. "Sounds good." She pulled out her scroll. "What's the name of the booty? I'll see if there's a place that's close to it and the Library."

"Did you just call it a booty?"

Yang's please grin was visible across the room. "What's it called?" she repeated.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Cerise Moran Clothing."

"... Yeah, so, like, _I _know how to spell that, but I'm curious if you do."

Weiss snorted at that. "C-E-R-I-S-E."

Yang typed the letters in. "Ah, this 'Cerise Moron Clothing Boutique' in Westrun Mall?"

"Mor_an_, but yes."

"M'kayyy, found a place. Pippy's Tea and Coffee."

Weiss frowned at that. "I'm not sure I can trust a drink made by someone named Pippy."

Yang burst out laughing, which was… really nice. Weiss smiled, pleased.

"What's so funny?!" Ruby cried as she burst back into the room.

She was wearing a red polo shirt and her usual pair of black skinny jeans. The polo was likely her version of dressing up. Not much, but Weiss shouldn't fault her for that, right? It was probably the nicest thing she had.

But they'd fix that today.

"Weiss made a joke," Yang explained simply.

"Awwww, and I missed it?! What was it?!" She hopped excitedly and stared wide-eyed and expectantly at Weiss.

Weiss smirked. "I'm not sure what I said that you thought was a joke," she quipped to Yang, making the girl laugh again.

Ruby seemed to be in physical pain from not knowing what the joke was, scrunching up her nose and letting out a dismayed groan.

It was pretty funny.

Blake sauntered out of the other bathroom, fixing an earring into place as she looked up at Yang. "Have at it," she said.

Yang grunted and pushed herself up to a sitting position. "Catch me, partner!" she mumbled sleepily before hopping down-though it looked more like she was throwing herself down.

Blake didn't register Yang's words in time, and she let out a tiny shriek and jumped to the side as Yang flopped down in front of her.

Yang hit the ground feet first, which _should_ have meant she would be fine, but she apparently actually expected Blake to catch her, because she stumbled forward and fell onto her hands and knees.

"What the heck, Blake! I said 'catch me'!" She staggered to her feet and gave her partner a grumpy glare.

"I-why-but-what?" Blake sputtered. "You think I can catch _you_?"

Yang's frown deepened, going from playfully angry to something dangerously close to the real thing. "You callin' me fat, Belladonna?"

"Wh-what?! No! You're just… heavy?" She clearly knew that was a weak defense, and Yang's eyes narrowed accordingly.

"You know, muscle _is_ almost three times heavier than fat," Weiss interjected on Blake's behalf. "So really she's saying you're… how did you phrase it yesterday? 'Jacked as fuck'?"

Yang raised an eyebrow at Weiss, then turned back to Blake. "That what you meant, Belladonna?" There was an edge to her voice, but it didn't sound… right. Weiss had heard angry Yang. This didn't sound like that.

Blake was too nervous to notice. "Y-yeah! You're heavy from muscle. You just would have knocked me over and we both would have ended up on the ground!" She glanced nervously between Weiss and Yang. "S-sorry."

At the apology, Yang broke up, laughing so hard she had to put her hands on her knees.

Ruby sighed. "Yang, stop being a jerk."

Yang laughed again, but straightened up. "You're so nervous!" she remarked to Blake. "Relax, babe. I was just kidding." She gave Blake a light punch on the shoulder that made the girl blink. "You'd have to be gods-damned crazy to think I'm fat."

Blake nodded mutely.

Yang smirked and headed toward the bathroom. "Nice to see a crack in that composure though," she poked as she shut the door.

That made Blake's eyes narrow, and the nervousness dissipated, transforming into a rueful smile.

"She's right, I wouldn't have expected you to crack like that," Weiss remarked.

Blake huffed and sat down on her bed. "Look, I'm still sleepy and she looked angry, alright. After she beat the crap out of me yesterday, I think it should be understandable for me to be a bit alarmed at angry Yang."

Weiss smiled. "You'll get no argument from me. I thought she was terrifying _long_ before yesterday."

Blake smirked at that, but Ruby made a small noise of protest.

"Guysss," she whined, "Yang isn't terrifying! She's awesome!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "You probably think that because she's never been mad at _you_, Ruby."

"What are you _talking_ about? Yang gets mad at me all the time! Yang gets mad at _everything_ all the time!"

"And that's… okay?" Blake asked.

"Yeah! It lasts for, like, ten seconds. Mad is just her default. Then she figures out how she's really feeling. Just… don't make her _actually_ mad and you'll be fine!"

Blake didn't seem convinced. "What makes her _actually _mad?"

Ruby turned thoughtful. "Not much. Rude people. People bullying me. Uh… Being made fun of for being poor." She glanced at Weiss at that.

That wasn't fair! Weiss hadn't _made fun_ of the sisters for being poor… had she?

Something in her expression must have given her thoughts away, because Ruby quickly waved her hands. "Not that you have! She just thought you were, before. But you weren't! Which is why she likes you now!"

Weiss hmphed and crossed her arms, but she didn't feel quite as offended at that. She also wasn't convinced Yang _liked_ her, per se, but the blonde at least seemed willing to tolerate her now. Which was progress.

That was a demoralizing thought.

"But yeah. Just don't be rude and she'll like you a lot! And you guys are both awesome, so, like, there's no problem!" She nodded at that, like her earnestness would help convince her teammates.

It did. At least, it did for Weiss. Blake was hard to read.

"Ready to do some clothes shopping?" she asked her partner to change the conversation.

"YUUUUUUUUS!" Ruby yelled, bending her knees and holding her balled fists out to the side like she was lifting weights. "I'm so exciteeeeeeeeeeeed!"

"Clearly," Weiss muttered, rubbing at her obliterated ear drums. Off to the side, Blake was clearly amused at Ruby's theatrics.

"Are you sure you wouldn't want to come to the Library with me and Yang instead?" she asked with a smirk.

From the expression Ruby made, one would think Blake had just asked her if she wanted to munch on a grub worm.

"Ew, no. Wait, you convinced _Yang_ to go to a _library _with you?"

Blake blinked. "I… guess? I didn't really need to convince her. I just said I wanted to go and she said she would go with me."

The confusion on Ruby's face was palpable.

Just then, Yang exited the bathroom. Ruby disappeared in a burst of petals and reappeared in front of Yang, pointing a dramatic finger at her sister's face.

"Who are you and what have you done with my sister?!"

Yang blinked. "Huh?"

"Blake said you were going with her to…" Ruby leaned forward and cupped a hand around her mouth, loudly whispering, "_the library!_"

"Yeah, so?"

Ruby wailed. "Yang, come back to meeeeee!" She threw her arms around her sister. "Blink once if you're under duress!"

Yang took the hug much like Weiss would, with a grumpy face and stiff arms at her sides. "Oh, you're using words like 'duress' now, are you?"

"Did Blake threaten you?!"

Blake visibly balked. "What?! You think _I_ threatened _Yang_?"

Ruby broke her hold around her sister to point a finger at Blake. "Quiet, you fiend!"

"Why am I a fiend?!"

"You broke my sister!"

Yang took the opportunity to push Ruby off of her, placing her hands on her shoulders to keep her at arm's length while Ruby flailed wildly trying to hug her again.

"Ruby, it's not a big deal. She wants to go to the library and I wanna hang out with her."

Ruby stopped swinging her arms around, crossing them and glaring up at Yang. "But you _always_ complain when I ask you to take me to the comics and games store!"

Yang snorted. "Well yeah, it's comic books." Ruby gasped, which just made Yang smirk wider. "Plus, I just like complaining about you."

"You suck!"

Yang stuck her tongue out at Ruby.

The brunette pouted. "So you _volunteer_ to go to the _library_ with your new partner, but you whine about going to the _comic book store_ with your loving sister?"

"Um… yep!"

"You suck!"

Blake piped up again. "I don't know why you're saying this like comic books are somehow _better_ than regular books."

Ruby turned to her. "They are! Comic books are _way_ cooler!"

Blake raised a dubious eyebrow.

"They are!" Ruby insisted. "They've got all the things books do, but _also_ awesome art!"

"And ridiculous plotlines," Yang jibed.

"Your _face _is a ridiculous plotline!"

Yang patted Ruby on the head, an action Weiss thought was a bit demeaning but Ruby didn't seem to mind. "Rubes," she said.

"Yeah?"

"You're dumb."

Ruby glared at her sister a moment longer.

She materialized at Weiss' side in the split second after Weiss registered the petals of her semblance floating around Yang.

"Come on, Weiss," Ruby grumbled as she grabbed her partner's arm and pulled her towards the door. "Let's get away from these stupidheads."

"But we're going into the city together!" Weiss protested as she was dragged out the door.

"No!"

"Ruby, don't be a brat!"

"Your face is a brat!"

"Stop saying stupid things about my face!"

"No!"

Weiss yanked on Ruby to get her to stop. Ruby turned and gave her frown that looked more cute than angry.

"Wait for your _team_, Captain Ruby," Weiss demanded.

Ruby sighed, her eyes darting past Weiss as Yang and Blake exited the room.

"Fine," she grumbled. "But I'm never speaking to Yang ever again!"

She disappeared in another burst of petals, evidently deciding to leave Weiss behind too.

"What part of 'wait' does she not understand?" Weiss bemoaned as red petals floated to the ground at her feet.

"Pretty much all four letters and then some," Yang answered cheerily.

"Your sister seems peeved," Blake commented. She and Yang walked down the hall, and Weiss fell in step beside them.

"She does this all the time. Just restless energy. When she gets upset she runs away."

"So she _is_ upset," Weiss noted.

Yang shrugged. "Probably a little bit. I wouldn't worry about it. She cheers up quick. Thirty seconds on the shuttle and she'll be talking to me again."

'_Shuttle? I don't think so.'_

Blake spoke up before she could say something about it, but she pulled out her scroll and summoned a car anyway.

"Funny, she said the same thing about you," Blake told Yang.

"Hm?"

"She said you don't stay angry for very long."

Yang feigned being offended, putting a hand on her chest and gasping. "Me? _Stay_ angry? I never get angry at all!"

Weiss and Blake both gave her deadpan stares.

"Heh." Yang cracked a small smile. "Well, yeah, fine. Whatever."

Blake rolled her eyes and turned to Weiss. "So you're coming with us?"

"Not to the library." Blake's face fell a little at that, which surprised Weiss. It was kind of nice to know she was wanted though. "I thought it would be nice to get some coffee together before we split up. Yang found a questionably named tea and coffee shop that's supposedly close to the library and the shopping strip I'm taking Ruby to."

"What did poor Pippy ever do to you?" Yang joked.

"She had parents that named her Pippy."

Yang snorted. "But hey." Her tone made Weiss turn to her. "Save the receipt. Please."

Weiss nodded. "I remember."

Yang smiled at that. "And same advice as before. Make her push the shopping cart."

Weiss' eyebrow quirked up. "There aren't _shopping carts_ where I'm taking her," she replied indignantly.

"Oh." Yang glanced at Blake, then back at Weiss. "Well you're fucked."

Blake giggled immediately, then clamped her hands over her mouth, cutting off the sound, and looked at Weiss with wide-eyed laughter.

Weiss huffed. "I don't think it'll be a problem."

"She will try to buy _everything_," Yang stressed to her.

Weiss shrugged. "I can afford it. And she could stand to vastly increase the size of her wardrobe."

"Huh," Yang said thoughtfully. She looked at Weiss peculiarly. "Maybe you two _are _a good fit."

Weiss rolled her eyes to keep from smiling.

They were out on the plaza now. The roundabout where the driver would pick them up was a little ways away.

"I called a car, by the way," she informed the other two as she looked around for Ruby.

"Aw, come on!" Yang whined.

"What?"

"The shuttle's so cool, Weiss! There's so many people and conversations and it feels so neat! Give it a try!"

"That sounds awful."

Yang grunted grumpily in response. "Fiiiine. I _guess_ I'll settle for your dumb limousine."

Weiss narrowed her eyes. "Where is my dolt of a partner?" she asked instead of continuing this ridiculous conversation.

"Oh, probably running in angsty circles 'cause she's sad I'm going to the library for some reason."

Weiss looked around again. She'd been looking for Ruby, but maybe Yang was right and she should be looking for rose petals instead.

There. On the far side of the open grounds there was what looked like a tornado of tiny specks that were only barely distinguishable from the grey backdrop of the building behind them. There was someone standing in the middle of them, a female figure.

Ruby stopped running in circles around the girl and stopped to talk to her. She was gesturing animated, as was her way, and she suddenly pulled out Crescent Rose.

Weiss tensed, confused but ready to launch herself to help Ruby, but… there was no danger. Ruby unfurled Crescent Rose and rested the pointed tip in the ground while the other girl… was she taking pictures?

A couple others walked up to them as they talked. Even from this distance Weiss could recognize the bird boy from Team KORL-or rather, she recognized the bird on his shoulder and the wizard-looking staff he carried that Weiss suspected transformed into some sort of long barreled rifle. He and Ruby could probably be sniper buddies.

The long towncar pulled into the roundabout and stopped in front of the three girls. Weiss tapped her foot impatiently.

"Is she coming?" she asked nobody in particular, gesturing towards her partner.

Yang chuckled. "If you haven't noticed, she's easily distracted."

"Hmph." Weiss navigated her scroll and voice called Ruby. RedReapeR9000.

Across the way, Weiss could see Ruby hold her scroll up to her ear.

"Hey Weiss!"

"Are you coming or not, Ruby? We're about to leave without you."

"What?! Nooo!" She turned to the three people she was talking to and spoke to them, though she didn't cover the scroll's mic, so Weiss could still here. "Sorry, guys! I gotta run!"

One of them said something Weiss couldn't make out.

"I will!" Ruby responded. "Bye Greco!" She gave the bird a one fingered scratch on the head. The bird squawked or chirped or whatever that terrifying noise was in response, the sound causing static through Weiss' speaker.

Ruby burst into petals again, and something went wrong with their scroll call. Weiss' scroll seemed to try to keep the connection for a moment, and it just sounded like Ruby was calling from a wind tunnel. The crackling roar made Blake and Yang stare at the device wide-eyed too, but it quickly cut out.

'Call Ended'.

The streak of roses that was Ruby hurtled towards them, covering a couple hundred feet in a matter of seven or eight seconds. Ruby rematerialized in front of them, skidding to a halt and showering them with petals, all while wearing a nervous smile. She held her scroll up to her ear and met Weiss' eyes.

"Hi."

Weiss held up her own scroll to show the 'Call Ended' screen.

"Aw. You hung up on me," Ruby pouted.

"I didn't hang up on you, Dolt. Your semblance broke the connection and it doesn't even matter because you're _standing in front of me_!"

Ruby giggled, to which Weiss rolled her eyes. "Making friends?" she asked, using tone to make it clear she was really saying 'you made us wait'.

"Yeah!" Ruby answered, completely missing any sort of nuance. "Velvet asked if she could take a picture of Crescent Rose for her weapons project. And that guy's birb is really cool!"

"... Birb?" Weiss asked, offended at the very existence of such a nonsensical word, redoubled by the fact that her _partner_ was using it.

"Birb," Ruby confirmed with a confident nod.

"Ruby, 'birb' is not a word."

"Uh, Weiss, I'm pretty sure birb is _the_ word."

When Weiss sighed in exasperation, Ruby giggled again. She was doing this on purpose!

"Get in the car, you buffoon."

"Woohoo! Limooooo!" Ruby dove into the back and sat in one of the rear facing seats, bouncing up and down.

Yang and Blake followed her inside. Yang sat next to her sister and seemed to be perpetually amused at Ruby's excitement.

Weiss didn't understand it, because this was now Ruby's second ride in the towncar, so she wasn't sure why the novelty was still there. She settled in across from her partner, next to Blake, and had to struggle not to roll her eyes as Ruby opened and closed the minifridge over and over.

"This is so weird! There's a fridge! In a car!"

Yang's smile was probably going to become permanent. "Don't forget the TV," she said, handing Ruby the remote for the front-and-back screened television that folded down from the roof.

"Oh yeah! That's also awesome!"

She clicked to get the screen to fold down, watching with wide-eyed excitement. Then… she sent it back up, watching just as excitedly. Then she moved it back down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up-

"Ruby, please stop being ridiculous."

"Your _face _is-"

"Stop it!"

Ruby gave her pout, but it quickly turned into a blinding grin.

Yang leaned over and pointed at the remote in Ruby's hands. "And _that_ one tints the windows, remember?"

"Oh right! This is sweet!"

The windows started swapping between light and dark.

"Damn it, Yang," Weiss sighed.

Yang gave her a pleased smirk.

"Yang, let's make silly faces at the cars and I'll turn the windows on and off!"

"Ruby, didn't you say you weren't going to talk to Yang ever again?" Weiss asked.

Ruby blinked at her. "Oh yeah!" She turned to Yang. "I'm still mad at you!" She gave Yang back the remote like that would make it final.

Yang shot Weiss a glare, and it was Weiss' turn to smirk.

"So, where we dropping?" Ruby asked, looking at Weiss.

"What?"

Ruby grinned mischievously. "Where are we shopping?"

"We're gonna stop for coffee first, th-"

"Ooooh! I get coffee?"

"NO!" Yang legitimately shouted as the words registered to her. "No. You can have tea."

"Awww. I don't want boring leaf water!"

Blake wrinkled her nose. "Hey, tea is great."

Ruby blinked at her slowly, clearly unconvinced. Blake raised her hands in mock surrender.

"Maybe Weiss is right," she sighed. "I guess you're just uncultured." She said it with a teasing smile, but Weiss still liked that someone was agreeing with her.

"You can get a juice or something if they have it," Yang told her sister.

"Ooh, juice is good."

Already having some idea of what the answer would be, Weiss asked the obvious question. "What happens if she has coffee?"

"Terrible things, Weiss." Yang shook her head, her eyes open wide in mock horror. "Terrible things."

"Shudup," Ruby grumbled, crossing her arms and looking out the (now lightened) window. "Yer dumb."

Yang grinned and pulled Ruby into a side hug. Ruby kept her arms crossed and a pouty glare on her face, but didn't pull away. Weiss didn't realize she was smiling at the scene until she noticed Blake looking at her with an amused, knowing smirk.

She wiped the smile away.

They drove over Beacon Bridge, and Weiss took the time to enjoy the view as they crossed over sparkling blue ocean. Beacon wasn't on an island, but it was only attached to the main continent by a narrow strip of land that looped around in a backwards 'C' from the northern edge of Vale City, forming Beacon Bay. The city decided to make a bridge across the narrowest part of the bay so people wouldn't need to constantly go around the bay to get to Beacon, and thus Beacon Bridge was created. The longest bridge in Remnant, six miles long. It was built to be impressive to look at as much as it was to be functional, with towering archways that thematically tied to the arches of Beacon Tower.

Weiss loved it. She loved most great buildings and structures, the massive, man-made declarations that "this world is ours."

They weren't in the rightmost lane, so there were cars frequently impeding her view of the ocean, which was kind of irksome, and Ruby's blabbering about something was an incessant, droning background noise, but Weiss breathed deeply and enjoyed the moment. Heading into the city for shopping, getting coffee, great, sunny weather. Today was a good day so far, even with Ruby insisting on being a dolt.

And she was still riding the high of her fight with Ruby yesterday. Admittedly, it had been more of a struggle than she would have liked after she ran out of Dust, but it was still a decisive victory that had done wonders for her self-confidence.

Granted, that was just Ruby. What she really wanted was to fight Pyrrha. Professor Rustheart had said they'd be training with one of the other teams next week; maybe they'd get lucky and it would be Team JNPR.

Her gaze slid over to the skyline of Vale City. The inner docks were busy, the Bay sprinkled with tiny specks of ships coming and going. A couple were much closer, heading out into the open ocean and passing underneath Beacon Bridge as a result. Weiss saw one of the massive boats, laden with giant metal crates of goods and sporting the burnt orange and bronze color scheme of Vacuo, go under on one side, then turned and watched out the other window, waiting for it to come back into view.

She looked back to the city, her eyes tracing the edges of the tallest buildings. The silhouette of the city kind of created the profile of a face. Tall skyscrapers downtown creating the outline of a forehead, then as they shortened eastward there was a long nose and… hm. Nothing really created the outline of lips. Or a chin.

Okay, there was no face.

Weiss rolled her eyes at herself. She'd never been one to see shapes in the clouds, as was apparently a thing among idiots, but she was looking for them in cityscapes? That was silly.

The building-watching she was doing made her wonder about what they all were. The skyscrapers would be corporate buildings, surely, but the other, smaller ones? There could only be so many clothing stores and shopping malls and restaur-

"Oh!" she exclaimed, turning to her teammates. From the way the background noise Weiss had tuned out abruptly ended and the way Ruby's mouth was hanging open like she was in the middle of a word, Weiss realized she'd just interrupted something.

Oh well. It probably wasn't anything important anyway.

"Where are we eating dinner tonight?"

Ruby, who didn't seem to mind at all that she'd just been cut off, lit up. "Oh yeah! We were gonna get sushi, right?"

Blake's hands balled up into little fists and she wiggled them excitedly. "Yes! I actually found a place that might be nice. It's called Bento House, up at the docks."

Ruby matched Blake's excitement with a goofy wiggle of her own. "Oooh, if it's by the docks I bet it's got super fresh fish."

"Yeah!" Blake said cheerfully, posture and tone far more Ruby-sih than it was Blake-ish at the moment. She looked at Yang. "It's sushi _and_ hibachi, so if you for whatever reason don't want delicious fish, there'll be other stuff for you."

"What's hibichuchu?" Yang asked.

Ruby waved her hand in the air like they were in class and she wanted the teacher to call on her. "Ooh! I know! That place Dad took us to when you graduated from Signal?"

"Oh, where they cooked the food in front of us and made that dope onion volcano and stuff?"

"Yeah! That's hibichuchu."

"Hibachi," Blake corrected.

"Right."

"How many Atsom Stars does it have?" Weiss asked. She refused to have a sit down dinner at any restaurant below three stars, and that was being generous.

Blake's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, uh… I dunno. Let me check." She pulled out her scroll and started searching.

"Are Atsom Stars a fancy rich person rating system for food?" Yang asked.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "They're just _a_ rating system for restaurants. It has nothing to do with being rich."

"Hm."

"Four stars!" Blake declared. She looked at Weiss with a strangely hopeful look in her eyes. "That's good, right? It looks like it's a five star system 'cause there's only one gray star on here."

It took a moment for the reason for Blake's expression to click for Weiss. Blake was worried that Weiss would say no to her restaurant. But that was ridiculous! Four stars was fine.

It wasn't for her parents. Or for Whitley. They only at at five star restaurants. But one of Winter's favorite restaurants after she left for Atlas Academy was a little cafe that only had three stars, and she'd brought Weiss there a lot. Weiss had resettled her standards then, because she did actually like the place.

"Yes," she said, "four stars is great." She tried to give a reassuring smile but then remembered how awful her smile had looked in the mirror this morning and wiped the expression away, opting for a nod instead.

Blake grinned and wiggled her fists a little bit. _So_ Ruby-ish. Weiss was left wondering if this was just what excited-for-sushi Blake was like, or if their ridiculous team leader was rubbing off too much on Blake.

That was a concerning thought. Blake was actually tolerable. If she turned into another Ruby, Weiss might have to scream.

Content that they had a destination in mind for dinner tonight, Weiss turned back to the window. They were just getting off the bridge now, the road going from an open view of the world to being boxed in by tall buildings in a just a few feet of transition. Weiss didn't mind it, though. The buildings were representative of the power of industry, something the Schnees ruled. She didn't feel small next to skyscrapers, she felt empowered by them.

Unfortunately, traffic was also a thing, and something that Weiss _did_ mind. Having to slow to a crawl because of the rabble was annoying; Weiss hadn't been raised to wait on the peasantry.

Back home in Atlas, whenever they were going from their mansion into Atlas proper, they'd take a Chariot to one of the several landing pads around the city, and from there it was usually just a short limo ride to their destination. Weiss sorely missed the airship now.

The jerky, stop-and-start movement of the car was irksome, and it also meant the trip would take a while. Weiss tuned back in to her teammates' conversation again to pass the time.

"... could totally take her! I'll bet you ten of those cookies you and Weiss are getting today that I could pick her up and throw her, like, ten feet at least." It was Yang, all bluster and bravado, an arm still around Ruby.

"Who are we talking about?" Weiss asked, trying to figure out what was being talked about, though she wasn't totally sure why she cared.

"Leona," Yang answered.

"The big girl on Team KORL that wears plate armor?"

"Yep!"

"Could you even pick her up?"

Yang glared. "You underestimate my power!" she exclaimed in a weirdly deep voice, shaking a fist dramatically. Weiss didn't really understand why.

"Don't try it!" Ruby squeaked with a grin, grabbing onto Yang's fist and pulling it into her lap.

"Try-what?" Weiss was very confused right now. "What is she trying?"

"I think they're quoting a movie," Blake answered for her helpfully.

"Oh." Weiss glared at the two sisters. "I wish it wasn't so impossible to follow conversations with you two," she griped.

When Ruby pouted, Yang just smirked. "You just need to get woke, Weiss."

"I… what?"

Yang snorted, smiling, and Ruby let out an amused little giggle. Weiss turned to Blake, exasperated, but it appeared Blake knew what was going on too, covering her smile with a cupped hand but failing to hide the laughter in her eyes.

Weiss huffed and glared out the window. "If you jerks are just going to make fun of me in _my_ limo, you can just get out and walk!"

There was a click as someone unfastened their seat belt, and then someone slammed into the middle seat between Weiss and Blake. Weiss turned in surprise and-

Yep, it was Ruby.

Ruby hugged Weiss' arm. "Don't be mad, Weiss! We're laughing _with_ you, not _at _you! Your confused face is really funny."

Weiss huffed again, offended at the implication. "I'm not _confused_. You're just full of nonsense and just say nonsensical things all the time!"

"Yeah, and it confuses you," Yang smirked.

"Only insofar as anybody would be confused by a random stream of… randomness!"

Ruby giggled again and gave Weiss' arm a rub. "Okay okay. No randomness. We were talking about who would win in a fight, Yang or Leona."

"But we haven't seen Leona fight."

"I can totally take her!" Yang declared.

"But… we haven't seen her fight," Weiss repeated slowly. "We have no basis of comparison."

"I can take her."

Weiss rolled her eyes, but Ruby spoke up before she could retort.

"Okay okay! Who would win: Jaune or Zwei?"

"Zwei," Yang answered matter-of-factly, making Ruby break into her trademark giggle.

"Zwei's your dog, right?" Blake asked.

Yang nodded. "Yep!" She glanced at Weiss. "Is a corgi beating up a huntsman-in-training not _logical_ enough for you, Weiss?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes at the mocking tone, but shrugged, jostling Ruby a bit in the process. "Against Jaune? No, you're probably right."

Ruby's giggles broke into full blown laughter. She doubled over as she laughed, pulling on Weiss' arm as she did so. Weiss tried to be annoyed about it, but she was mostly just pleased she'd gotten such a positive reaction from the joke.

She rolled her eyes anyway.

"Who would win," Blake asked with a silly little grin, "Zwei or that kid's falcon?"

"Oh, Greco?" Ruby straightened back up. "He's so cool! I bet he'd win. He's got, like, talons and wings and stuff."

Yang shook her head vehemently, her blonde mane flinging back and forth. "Nuh uh, Zwei totally wins."

"But Zwei can't fly!" Ruby argued.

"But Ruby," Yang said, a deathly serious expression on her face, "he wields the power of cuteness."

Ruby rolled her eyes-she was still terrible at it, though. "Cuteness doesn't help in a fight, Yang."

"It's literally _all _that matters in a fight! The power of cuteness is the greatest power one can carry into battle."

"But then why did I beat Ruby yesterday?" Weiss joked, hoping to get another laugh.

Yang's eyes just went wide in surprise instead. Not quite what she'd wanted.

Ruby just chirped, "'Cause you're super awesome!" though, which was kind of nice.

"Wait wait," Yang said, shaking her hands in front of her to stop Ruby from speaking. "Are you calling Ruby cute?" she asked, looking incredulous for some odd reason.

Weiss blinked at her, then turned to see Ruby with a smile and a curious squint turned her way. Blake was just smirking behind Ruby.

"W-well yes," she answered.

Yang gasped and covered her mouth with her hands exaggeratedly.

"What?!" Weiss demanded. "She is objectively cute!" She felt Ruby give one of those stupid happy wiggles next to her and chose to ignore it. "That's not strange! You've said she's cute too!"

Yang shrugged. "Well yeah. I just didn't expect you to, like, find _people_ to be cute, much less Ruby."

"What's _that _supposed to mean?"

"Yeah, what's that supposed to mean?!" Ruby echoed her.

Yang shrugged again. "Just surprised is all. Why are _you_ getting all uppity, Rubes?"

Ruby frowned, looking a little confused. "Oh. I dunno. Weiss was mad, so I got mad too."

"I'm with Weiss on this one," Blake said, coming to the rescue. "Ruby is objectively adorable."

"I _agree_!" Yang protested. "I just wasn't expecting Weiss to think so!"

"Well I do. I have eyeballs."

Ruby wiggled again. "Well shucks. Thanks guys. You're all pretty cute, too."

"I'm not-"

"Except Weiss!" Ruby cut her off. "Weiss is not cute. She is regal."

Weiss gave a satisfied nod at that.

"You're both a couple of goofballs," Yang muttered.

"That's fresh, coming from you," Blake teased.

Yang glared at her. "You know, I'm starting to think you don't understand how this partner thing works. You're supposed to be on _my_ side."

"I am on the side of truth," Blake said back.

"Hmph." Yang crossed her arms. "Let's see if Truth will save you from Ursai out in the Emerald Forest."

"Pfft! I don't need saving from Ursai," Blake laughed dismissively. "Big, dumb idiots."

"_I_ think they're cute and cuddly," Yang shot back defensively.

"You don't _really_," Weiss said.

"It's true," Ruby told her, giving a sincere nod. "She's never actually tried to kill an Ursa before, she just hugs them so hard they explode."

"I…" Weiss glanced between Ruby and Yang, who was also nodding. She didn't believe it. At all. It was ridiculous-Grimm were horrifying freaks of nature, not cute and cuddly stuffed animals.

But Ruby looked so sincere…

And it _was_ Yang. Yang was touched in the head juuuust enough that it might be possible.

It was Ruby that broke first. Her lips twitched in a tiny smile, and when Weiss narrowed her eyes suspiciously, she immediately launched into a pleased cackle.

Yang joined her.

"Did you see her face, Ruby?" she cried, laughing.

Ruby nodded vigorously. "She was like all, 'There's no _way_ Yang likes Ursai… is there?'" She put on a blank expression while saying the words that Weiss supposed was supposed to be an imitation of her.

They both cracked up again.

Weiss sighed and looked at Blake. "I hate them," she said.

Blake pursed her lips together in a smile.

"Oh, I think we're here!" Ruby chirped, leaning over Weiss to look out the window. Weiss hadn't even payed attention to the fact that the car had stopped as they'd been stationary more than they'd been moving for the past few minutes anyway. But Ruby was right-and also squishing her. She nudged Ruby, and that small push coupled how off-balance the girl was from leaning over another person sent Ruby tumbling into the space between the two rows of seats with a thud.

"Eep!"

Ruby landed on her hands and knees and blinked up at Weiss in surprise.

"Weiss, stop shoving my sister around!" Yang yelled.

"I didn't-I just nudged her to get off of me and she threw herself onto the ground!"

"Lies and salamander!" Ruby cried out, hopping back up into the seat.

"You mean lies and slander?" Blake asked.

"That too!"

Luckily, Ruby didn't _actually_ seem mad, giving Weiss a playful glare that was more smile than a normal person would have while trying to look angry. She shoved Weiss' shoulder toward the car door and jerked her chin in that direction.

Weiss obliged the indication, opening the door and stepping out of the car. If they were in Atlas and their driver was one of the Schnee's personal drivers, he would have already opened it for her. But alas, he was basically just a taxi driver with a really nice car that answered ride requests from scrolls. That was fine, though, Weiss supposed. Having the Atlas drivers around consequently meant having her family around, and she was willing to open any number of car doors herself to stay away from her parents.

Ruby bounced out of the car and immediately zipped over to the entrance of the coffee shop, much to Weiss' annoyance. They didn't at all look like a team if Ruby was constantly running off ahead of them.

Blake and Yang filed out, and Blake gave Weiss a soft "thanks" as Weiss closed the car door and waved at the driver.

As much as Weiss was loathe to admit it, Pippy's little coffee shop looked pretty nice. Small but spacious from the way the light furniture was arranged, it looked quaint. There was a display case of pastries at the counter, a variety of espresso machines, steamers, coffee pots, and blenders within the barista's section, and the lighting and atmosphere were pleasantly vibrant.

Unfortunately, it was also filled with people. There were seven people in the line in front of them, and if there was one thing Weiss hated more than having to wait on others while she was in a car, it was having to wait on others while simply standing there.

_Very_ annoying.

Of course, the others didn't seem to mind. Blake seemed happy to people watch. There was a couple at one of the three small tables out in what served as a patio that gave her a strangely wistful smile.

Yang and Ruby's attention was solely on the pastry case. Because of course it was.

There was a television playing the local news, like something from a bar. Bodies of suspected drug dealers were found this morning in some place called 'Dancetown' in the city. Apparently it was part of a pattern lately. The bulletin title read "Another vigilante murder spree", which was a scary sentence to read. It meant there was someone or multiple someones out there killing a lot of people, _and_ it meant there were a lot of bad guys out there. The subtitles covering what the anchor was saying were a bit small to make out from the back of the line.

"Freaky, huh?"

It was Blake, who'd noticed where Weiss' attention had gone.

Weiss dipped her chin in a shrug.

Ruby and Yang were jabbering to each other and pointing at different pastries in the case, Ruby smudging the glass with a tiny finger like a hooligan. The people in line in front of them were an older couple that were smiling at the sisters' antics fondly, for some reason.

Blake was still watching Weiss curiously. "This reminds me of… I had a… I knew someone, once," she said, prompting Weiss to turn her way. "He thought it was his duty to fight the wrongs he saw in the world. Discrimination, racism, trafficking, slavery. He thought he could end evil with his conviction and his fists. Then it went from his fists to his sword."

"He killed people?" Weiss asked, alarmed.

Blake nodded. "He still is, as far as I know. And when he started… he told himself it was making a difference. Told _me_ it was making a difference. But I think he just liked it."

Weiss kept her expression neutral as she asked, "And where were you, when he started killing?"

"Not standing far enough away." She looked… really, really sad. Haunted, almost.

"Did you… have you…?" Weiss didn't want to finish the question.

Blake met her eyes for the briefest of moments and looked away. She absently followed Yang's movement for a long while-Yang currently had her arms around a the back of a rambunctious Ruby to keep her from… doing _something_ Rubyish. Weiss wasn't sure what, as she hadn't been paying attention.

Blake finally opened her mouth to answer.

"I-"

"Hey, Weiss, what are you gonna get?" Ruby chirped, doing her best to twist around in Yang's grip to make eye contact with her partner.

Yang, being the kind person she was, turned around so Ruby could face Weiss, and Weiss noticed that Ruby's feet were actually dangling a couple inches above Yang's.

Weiss was more than a little annoyed that she and Blake had been interrupted. It had felt like it was an important conversation, and the way Blake had voluntarily started it herself made Weiss think it was something she'd _wanted _to talk about. To get off her chest.

Though that phrasing felt a bit assumptive. Like she had something to feel guilty about. But… she hadn't killed anyway, right? She was about to say "no" before Ruby interrupted, right?

"Wei-eiss!" Ruby whined with a smile, kicking her feet as Yang swang her back and forth like a pendulum. "Whatchya getting?!"

Weiss cleared her throat and rolled her eyes. She wasn't quite sure if she was annoyed or amused at the sight of her partner pitching left and right in front of her. It _was_ pretty cute.

But also ridiculous.

She gave a cursory glance to the drink menu chalked out in various colors on the boards hanging from the ceiling behind the barista stand, more out of habit than anything. She already knew what she'd get. The same thing she always got.

"An espresso con panna and…" Hm, did she want one? Sure, what the heck. She'd been getting a good amount of exercise in this week with her runs and the combat round yesterday, she could afford to splurge a bit on calories. "And a coffee cake."

"Oooh, is that, like, espresso with pineapple?"

"I-what? Ruby, I said 'con _panna_', not 'con pineaple'."

"Oh. What's that?"

Weiss sighed. "It means 'espresso with cream'."

Ruby gasped. "Like whipped cream?"

"Chanti-" Weiss sighed again, dropping the contrarian correction. "Yes, whipped cream."

"That sounds awesome!" She craned her head backwards, displaying a remarkable amount of neck flexibility to look up at Yang. "I wanna get what Weiss is getting!"

Yang frowned down at her little sister. "You think you're so sneaky, don't you?"

"What? Noooo…"

"Trying to trick me into getting you espresso 'cause it's not coffee?"

"They're different things, Yang! Dad said 'no coffee, not 'no espresso'!"

Yang sighed and gave Weiss a dead expression. "Look what you did."

"I-_me_? What did _I_ do?!"

"Next!"

Yang spun back around, swinging Ruby with her, and stepped up to the ordering counter. The barista was a teenage boy with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes that were _definitely_ checking out Yang.

"Hey!" Yang greeted him cheerily.

"'Sup," he replied, giving her an up and down sweep that Weiss found strange, considering there was a Ruby covering most of his view of her. Yang seemed amused and pleased though.

She gave the guy a teasing smirk. "Could I get a… a… hm."

Ruby sighed loudly and kicked her feet again. "She wants a white chocolate frappe-thingy."

"Hm, that does sound good," Yang murmured.

"You say that every time!"

"And I'm right every time!"

The guy nodded. "Sounds good. Espresso or no espresso?"

"Espresso!" Ruby answered for her sister.

The barista raised his eyebrows and looked at Yang, who nodded. "'Kay 'kay," he said, pushing some buttons. "What size?"

"The big one!"

He opened his mouth to say something, then shrugged and thought better of it. "And for the little 'un?" he asked instead.

"Hey, I'm not that little!"

He gave Ruby an "are you serious?" look.

That wasn't fair. If Ruby was little, that meant Weiss was close to little, and that was unacceptable.

"You guys got, like, apple juice or something?" Yang asked.

"We do, yeah."

"Big one of those, please."

Ruby crossed her arms. "You guys got, like, espresso or something?" she asked.

The barista blinked and looked over at the espresso machine, then back at Ruby. "Uh…"

Yang gave Ruby a squeeze, prompting the girl to let out a squeak, before saying, "Ruby, you keep this nonsense up and all you're gonna get is a glass of milk."

"But Yaaa-"

"_Skim_ milk."

Ruby pouted and let out a comically distressed whimper, but went silent.

Weiss didn't even realize she was smiling at the exchange until she noticed Blake glancing at her with a smirk. She wiped the smile away.

"And we'd also like two slices of the swirly pound cake," Yang added.

"Woohoo!" Ruby tried to throw her hands up in excitement, but with Yang's vice grip around her it just ended up turning into a sideways tilt.

"Got it. That'll be… ten sixty-three."

"That seems low," Yang observed.

The barista gave her a wink.

She pursed her lips in a provocative smirk. Setting Ruby down on the floor but keeping one arm still around her, she scanned her scroll to pay. Ruby didn't make any effort to try to escape while grounded, and when Yang picked her back up she actually seemed happy.

"I'll have 'em right out for you, hot stuff," the guy flirted.

Yang gave a little eyebrow twirk at him and carried Ruby down to the handoff plane wait for their order.

When Weiss and Blake both stepped up together, the barista gave _them_ a once-over too.

"I'll be with _you_ _two_ in just a moment," he drawled sleazily, giving a not-very-subtle look at Blake's cleavage as he turned.

Weiss wasn't sure if she was supposed to be pissed at the objectification or disappointed that _she'd_ never those looks. Not that she wanted them, but it would be nice to know that she could get them if she did, but she couldn't.

Then she noticed it.

The tail.

When the barista turned around and took a step away from the counter, Weiss could see the large, fluffy fox tail he had.

"Oh."

"Hm?" Blake intoned, turning back from the distraction of Yang tickling Ruby a few feet away. "What's… wrong?" She seemed to notice what Weiss was staring at.

"He's a-" Weiss cut herself off when she turned to find Blake glaring at her, a cold fire in her amber eyes.

"He's a what, Weiss?" she asked, a dangerous edge to her tone.

'_Shit. Does Blake not know how awful the faunus are?'_

Granted, Weiss had grown up in a better position than most to witness the evils the faunus commit on a daily basis, being a Schnee. But Blake seemed educated and aware of the world. How could she not know?

Weiss looked over at Ruby and Yang, both of whom were watching the barista make Yang's drink-with occasional tickle bursts from Yang, naturally. Neither seemed bothered that the guy making the drink was an animal. Not even human! Corrupted. Like how the Grimm were a mutation of animals, the faunice were an aberration of humans. And, just like Grimm, they were violent and bloodthirsty.

Blake was looking at her expectantly-and angrily.

"N-nothing," Weiss stammered in response. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't something that could be explained. Blake wouldn't understand the truth until she saw it. "He's just… a sleazebag." That was a good deflection.

"Mm."

"What?"

Blake looked away, crossing her arms and balling her fists in the crooks of her elbows. "I'm gonna go talk to Yang."

She started walking off before she'd even finished the sentence.

'_Damn it.'_

This… this was going to hurt. Weiss liked Blake. She was a refreshing drop of sanity in this team. And apparently a pro-faunus fool.

Weiss couldn't fault her for that. She'd likely just been raised in a bubble. Apparently a bubble with a friend that killed people, but still a bubble. She thought back to the things Blake said that person she knew was fighting against: racism, discrimination. Was he a faunus?

If Blake had been unfortunate enough to grow up around faunus, it would make sense that she would be on their side. She didn't know any better. She probably thought their tendency to rape, steal, kidnap, and murder was normal.

Strange, she didn't act that way at all. Wh-

"What can I get you, beautiful?"

The jarring interruption pulled Weiss back to the present.

The animal-boy was looking at her, eyes roaming her facial features. "You have pretty eyes," he told her quietly.

Weiss flinched. Her mind immediately went to the memory of one of the Schnee board member's daughters, who was found raped and beaten in an alley after she'd gone shopping alone one day. She was in the hospital for four months after that, and would have a permanent twitch in her hand from the nerve damage she suffered. She'd said it had been a bear faunus.

"I'm fine, actually."

She stepped away from the counter. Blake gave her a cutting glare and walked back over to place her own order. Weiss hugged herself defensively and glared back.

This wasn't fair, and it made Weiss _angry_ that it wasn't fair. What the Crucible did Blake know? She hadn't watched family friends, coworkers, associates, and dozens of other people that were within Weiss' orbit during her childhood get attacked and/or abused over the years. She was probably never a victim. She wasn't-

"Hey, Weiss!"

She jumped as Ruby appeared at her side.

"Sorry! Didn't mean to spook ya." Ruby was smiling, because of course she was. A clear plastic cup filled with apple juice was clamped between her hands. "You done ordering? We're sitting over there." She pointed toward the four-chaired table that Yang was currently sitting at, munching on a slice of pound cake.

Weiss nodded and walked over with her partner. "I didn't get anything."

"What?! What about your not-pineapple espresso? I wanted to try a sip." Ruby pouted a bit.

They were in hearing range of Yang now, and she turned and pointed a finger at Ruby. "Stop trying to manipulate Weiss into giving you coffee, you little monster!"

Ruby pulled a chair out for Weiss, which was pretty nice, then plopped down next to her, across from her sister. "It's _espresso_, Yang. Gosh."

Yang gave Weiss an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry you have to deal with her."

"I am too," Weiss said, not managing to smile because she was still emotionally reeling from this crap with Blake.

"Hey!" Ruby protested.

Blake approached the table and sat beside Yang silently, avoiding eye contact with Weiss.

"Blake," Ruby fake whispered, "go get Weiss her espresso companana. She forgot to ord-ow!"

Yang kicked her under the table.

Blake finally looked at Weiss, giving her another deadpan, cutting glare. "Oh no," she drawled. "Weiss wouldn't want to touch a _dirty_ drink, right Weiss?"

Weiss looked away.

"What?" Ruby asked. "Dirt-what?"

"Oh nothing," Blake said nonchalantly. "Weiss is just… bein' a Schnee."

Weiss shot to her feet, her chair screeching backwards. It was a weird feeling of deja vu to her argument with Yang earlier this week. But where Yang had been openly angry, fiery almost, in their argument, Blake looked cold. She had an eyebrow raised, clearly unimpressed with Weiss' display of anger.

And just like last time, Weiss' brain was shorting out and she couldn't think of what to say. A billion different ideas were coming to mind, and also none.

What had she said last time? She'd… she'd told Ruby to eat her pancakes and then walked away, hadn't she?

Walking away sounded good right now.

"Wait, Weiss!"

Ruby bamfed in front of her with a cloud of petals. "Weiss, where are you going?"

She looked sad and confused, her eyes darting back and forth between Weiss and Blake. "What… what's going on?"

Weiss frowned, not sure how to answer. Her brain was still trying to find something to say back to Blake, even though she'd already walked away from the table.

"I… Do you want to go shopping?" she managed to get out.

Not a bit of the confusion left Ruby's expression. "W-well yeah, but what about…." She looked back at the table, and Weiss followed her gaze.

Blake had apparently still been glaring at the back of Weiss' head. Yang was leaning over to her, clearly concerned, looking at Weiss occasionally.

Weiss turned away from them.

"Come on, let's go."

She grabbed one of Ruby's hands and pulled her to the door.


	17. Thaw 2-2

**I was feeling extra fluffy this week :3 **

**Of course, White Rose clothes shopping NEEDS to be floofy. Hope you guys enjoy!**

* * *

"Uh! Okay, bye Yang! Bye Blake! We're going-"

The door to the coffee shop swung closed as Ruby was waving back to the two, Weiss dragging her by her hand. Well, 'wave' was a loose term-she was mostly just swinging her cup of apple juice from side to side.

"Wei-" she stumbled a bit, off balance because Weiss was dragging her and hadn't slowed down at all as Ruby tried to finish her goodbye. "Weiss, what's going on? Why are you and Blake mad at each other?"

She ended the question with a little yank on her partner's hand to get her to stop, or at least slow down.

"I'm not mad," Weiss retorted defiantly. She did slow down, thankfully, though she blatantly avoided looking at Ruby.

"Yes you are!"

"No I'm not!"

"Weiss!" Ruby yanked her partner's hand a little more forcefully this time, and Weiss begrudgingly stopped.

Ruby took a second to figure out what to say. _She_ was a little mad: she'd been having a great day and been having a ton of fun with Yang, and now she was getting dragged away from her sister _and_ her pound cake by a stomping Weiss that she needed to cheer up _again_. Not that she minded that last part, but losing out on her own good morning for it kinda sucked.

But that wasn't what was important.

"Please tell me what's going on. What is with you and getting into fights at breakfast?"

Weiss wrinkled her nose. "I don't-that's not a thing!"

"Tellmewhat'swrong!" Ruby blurted out. She just wanted to help and Weiss was making that incredibly difficult.

Locking the fingers of her free hand around each other and giving Ruby's hand an unconscious squeeze, Weiss struggled through some of her super complicated smart person thoughts. "C-can we forget about it?"

Ruby huffed in exasperation. "W-"

"Please?" Weiss quickly cut her off. "I just wanted to have a nice coffee with my team and then go clothes shopping with my partner and everything's ruined now and I just wanted to… I want…" She trailed off and looked away, but Ruby had already seen the pain in her eyes.

'_You just wanted to have a fun day with your team.'_

Ruby's grumpiness immediately dissipated, and she pulled Weiss into a hug. Weiss was surprised at it for some reason and stiffened up-because of course she did-but Ruby just gave her an even tighter squeeze before pulling away. Weiss gave her the _tiniest_ of grateful smiles, so tiny that maybe Ruby was just imagining it.

She probably was.

"Okay. Okay, sure. Let's go shopping." She gave Weiss a smile of her own, and Weiss responded with a nod.

They started walking again, side by side. The streets were clogged still, but the sidewalks were mostly empty. Silly people! With this traffic, running-or even walking-would be much faster than driving!

Maybe that was Ruby's semblance talking.

"You know where we're going, right?"

Weiss nodded absently, clearly lost in thought. Tiny indications of emotion were running across her face, too subtle for Ruby to really figure out what the emotions were. She definitely looked unhappy, though.

"Hey!" she chirped, bumping her partner's shoulder with her own. She needed to distract Weiss. Weiss had basically _asked_ to be distracted just now, but if Ruby didn't follow through then she'd just end up wallowing in her thoughts.

"Hm?" Weiss blinked rapidly and looked over at her.

…. Darn, she hadn't actually figured out what to _say _to distract her.

"Uh… I realized a little bit ago that I got you paints but nothing to paint on!" Weiss' eyes went wide with the change of direction. "You wanna go get a painting… thing? What is the special paper thing you paint on called?"

"A canvas?"

"Yeah! You wanna get one of those today?"

Weiss seemed taken aback by the suggestion. "But-but we're shopping for _you_ today."

Ruby shrugged happily. "We can do both!"

Weiss frowned, considering. After a moment, she nodded slowly, a small smile touching her lips. "Sure, that sounds nice."

Woohoo! Ruby - 1, Weiss' Sadness - 0.

They reached the street crossing and Weiss hit the button to tell the light on the other side that they were there. Ruby pressed it right after her, and then kept pressing it a bunch.

"Pressing it multiple times doesn't make the light turn green any faster, Ruby."

"Whaaa? That's literally the opposite of what Yang says!"

"Well Yang's an idiot."

"Hey!"

Weiss' lip twitched.

Mr. Stoppy, the red hand on the light across the street, turned into Mr. Walky, the little green walking dude. Weiss started forward, and Ruby quickly reached out to grab her hand while following, wrapping her fingers around Weiss' pale palm.

Man, her skin was so weirdly cold. It actually felt pretty nice! Like how the cold side of a pillow is the comfiest.

Weiss frowned down at their hands as they walked, then at Ruby.

"What?!" Ruby protested. "You have to hold hands when crossing the street!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "That's a rule for _children_, Ruby."

"Nuh-uh! It's not a child rule, it's a… regular rule! Dad says so."

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her. "Does he make Yang follow that rule too?"

"Well, I'm usually holding Yang's hand."

"And when you're holding your dad's, does he still make her hold hands?"

Ruby took a moment to try to remember such an occurrence. "... Nooo?"

Weiss nodded like she was expecting that answer. "Hm."

"What?! What's that mean? What's 'hm'?"

"Oh, nothing." Weiss looked at her with an amused smirk that made Ruby _super_ grumpy, 'cause it clearly _wasn't_ nothing.

They reached the sidewalk and Ruby let go of Weiss' hand with a huff. Weiss' dumb grin got even bigger.

Ruby was, like, eighty percent sure Weiss was laughing at her, which was totally _not cool_ 'cause she hadn't done anything worth laughing at. But at least Weiss was smiling.

"So where would you like to go first?" Weiss asked her.

"Oh, I get to choose?"

Weiss nodded. "Today _is_ for you," she said, giving Ruby's shoulder a bump.

Wow, Nice Weiss was awesome.

"Hm. What are my options?"

"Well, there's the cookie sho-"

"Cookies!" Ruby immediately cheered. "Cookies first."

Weiss rolled her eyes and shook her head to herself. "Hold on, dolt. The cookies won't be ready when we get there. I had to ask the baker to custom make that batch I brought you before."

"Wow, really? You did that for me?"

Weiss tilted her head and looked at her quizzically. "Of course. They were… apology cookies. They needed to be perfect."

Ruby smiled at that. She totally would have forgiven Weiss if she'd just said sorry! She hadn't even felt like she was _owed_ an apology. Instead, Weiss had gotten her special made cookies and was taking her clothes shopping.

Of course, Ruby would never say _no_ to cookies. And new fancy Weiss-y clothes were awesome too…

"Okay, what else is there?"

"There's a clothing boutique in the plaza where the cookie shop is that we need to go to. They've agreed to look at your cloak-" she gestured towards Ruby's favorite adornment "-to color match it and custom make a blouse like the one I have that you liked and import it in. We can come back and pick it up when it arrives, which the employee told me would take a couple weeks."

Holy CRAP, Weiss went all out with all this custom specialty awesome stuff.

"Wow, thank you."

Weiss gave her a small smile in response. "And we can visit some other stores if you'd like. There's a lot of good ones in this area that I didn't even check out."

Ruby nodded vigorously. "_And_ we gotta go get you some canvases! Canvaseses? Canvi?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Canvases is correct, you dolt."

Nice! She got it on the first try.

"I still wanna get cookies first," she admitted timidly.

Weiss sighed. "I figured. We can go ask the baker to get started on them and then pick them up after we go get some clothes."

"They'd be okay with that?"

"Yes, that's what I did the other day."

"Oh, neat. So… cookie place, clothes, back to cookies, then painting canveese?"

Weiss burst out in laughter at that last word-which made Ruby feel _awesome_-then quickly clamped her hand over her mouth. "Sounds good," she agreed, a hitch in her voice like she was ready to laugh again.

Ruby - 2, Weiss' Sadness - 0!

It only took them a few more minutes to get to where they were going. A big stone sign had the words 'WESTRUN MALL' carved into it at the entrance, flanked on both sides by sidewalk. It was a super awesome looking outdoor mall, set up to where the fronts of the stores and restaurants were facing a central plaza with a pretty fountain and stone walkways that cut across really bright green grass. The storefronts themselves looked sparkly and new.

This was definitely where rich people shopped.

Ruby could smell the faint scent of vanilla deliciousness wafting through the air. Her tummy loudly informed that it most definitely wanted to follow the smell.

When Weiss snorted in amusement, Ruby realized she'd heard her stomach too. She felt her cheeks light up like Angry Yang's hair.

Weiss pointed to a store on their left. Wafer's Treats. The cookie bakery. "Shall we?" she asked.

Ruby was already skipping ahead. She got to the store and pressed her nose to the front window, peering inside.

"Whooooa," she breathed.

There was a display case at the counter filled with the superest cookies Ruby had ever seen! There were chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies and that looked like chocolate-and-peanut brittle and mint swirl bark and-

"Come on, you buffoon," Weiss grumbled, dragging her by the arm into the store.

"Is that cookie made of _gold_?!"

Weiss chuckled and brought her up to the counter. There was a big man behind it, with vibrant red hair and beard and a big ol' round nose that reminded Ruby of the little dough character on the cinnamon roll packages that their family got at the grocery store. Appropriate, really.

The man immediately recognized Weiss, and burst into a big smile that Ruby definitely approved of. Maybe big happy smiles was just something that you did a lot when you always had cookies.

"Welcome back, Miss… White, was it?" He had a deep, booming voice that matched his size, and he sounded genuinely happy to see them.

"Weiss," Weiss corrected. "My first name."

"My apologies, Weiss." He looked at Ruby. "Is this the cookie aficionado friend you told me about?"

"It is indeed," Weiss answered while Ruby beamed happily at the baker.

"So how were the strawberry shortbread cookies?" he asked, eyes twinkling.

"Am_aaaaaaaaaazing_!" Ruby replied. "They were the best cookies I've ever had, and I've had a _lot_ of cookies."

The baker chuckled. "Well that makes an old man proud."

"You don't look that old," Ruby chirped.

He got pleasantly flustered. "Well thank you, little miss." He held out a hand to her. "I'm Wafer the Baker, at your service."

From the way his lip quirked, he was clearly quite pleased with the little rhyme.

Ruby shook the hand, eyes going wide at just how tiny her hand was in his. Her fingers barely reached the far side of his palm!

"Nice to meet you, Mister The Baker. I'm Ruby the… Dooby?"

Weiss smacked her forehead. "Please don't call yourself a dooby."

Ruby blinked. "Why, does it mean something?"

Weiss let out a slow breath through her nose and shook her head at Ruby slowly, like she'd just missed a really obvious question on a homework assignment. "Just… don't."

"Okaaay," Ruby grumped with a pout.

Mr. Wafer chuckle again. "Nice to meet you, Miss Just Ruby." Ruby giggled at the joke. "What would you ladies like today?"

Weiss spoke up. "We were wondering if we could get another dozen of those strawberry shortbread cookies, if that's alright." Mr. Wafer's eyebrows shot up, and Weiss quickly rushed out, "Same deal as last time!"

Something about the way she said that caught Ruby's attention. "Deal? What deal?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it," Weiss replied, shaking her head. "And don't mention it to your sister, either."

"What? Why not?"

Weiss didn't answer her, intently keeping her eyes on the baker. Ruby turned to him, super confused.

Mr. Wafer's eyes narrowed as he glanced between Weiss and Ruby, like he was figuring something out. But Ruby didn't know what! He smiled at Weiss.

"No need for that, dear. We've still got the rest of the mix we got for you a few days ago. I'd be happy to bake those for you at normal cost, if you're willing to wait again."

'_Normal cost. Weiss paid extra last time."_

_That's_ what Weiss didn't want Ruby to tell Yang. She wasn't sure why-like, Yang didn't like when other people paid for them, like when they'd gotten lunch with friends from their old school and stuff, but she wouldn't make a big deal out of this, would she?

Ruby had no idea, actually. Yang had been extra weird and angry about this kinda thing with Weiss, for some reason.

"You'd still have to bake a new batch of special order cookies," Weiss argued. "I'd be happy to compens-"

Mr. Wafer cut her off, waving one of his big ol' hands. "Nonsense! I don't mind at all. I'm due to make some fresh batches anyway. I'd happy to make one for you young ladies."

Ruby gave him a beaming smile. She really liked this guy! He was super nice!

"Th-thank you," Weiss said, a confused look on her face. She glanced at Ruby.

"Would you two like anything else?" Mr. Wafer asked.

"Ye-!" Ruby cut herself off and looked to Weiss for permission. Weiss raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"You want _more_ than a _dozen_ cookies?"

Ruby stammered, "I-well, you dragged me out of the coffee shop and I had to leave my pound cake behind and I didn't have breakfast and and and-"

"Oh no!" Weiss cried out, regret and worry taking over her expression. "Ruby, I'm so sorry! I forgot about your-I… why didn't you say anything?"

Ruby shrugged lightly. "You were upset and wanted to get away. I didn't want to make you stay any longer."

"Ruby, you have super speed. It would have taken you half a second to go grab it."

"But you were holding my hand and I didn't want to let go."

Weiss' surprise came back in full.

"J-just 'cause, like, I didn't want you thinking I was leaving you alone. Or… whatever."

Weiss' eyebrows slowly lowered while the edges of her lips crept up.

They just looked at each other for a while, Ruby shuffling her feet nervously but not wanting to break eye contact. She wasn't really sure why. It felt like Weiss was having one of those "wow, Ruby's _actually_ my friend" moments, and Ruby wanted to make sure she believed it.

"Ahem."

Ruby and Weiss both turned to the baker, shaken from their moment.

"Pardon the interruption," he said with a genuine smile, "but what _would_ you like, Miss Ruby?"

Ruby looked at Weiss for permission again and got a quick nod.

'_Woohoo!'_

She inspected all the various treats in the case-and _oh my Grimm _there were so many awesome options!

The case seemed to be divided into two sections: normal treats and fancy-rich-person treats. In the first half there were chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, white chocolate cookies, chocolate chip muffins, blueberry muffins, peanut butter brittle, fudge squares, and more awesome, stuff that Ruby had seen before. In the _other _half were pastries with labels she wasn't as familiar with or had never even seen before, like 'Lemon-lime Shortbread', 'Raspberry-Almond Rugelach' (which looked like a raspberry filled croissant), 'Rosette Vanilla Bean' (which seemed to be a fancy name for a regular cookie with soft pink frosting on top in the shape of a flower), and a puffy little thing that read 'French Toast Muffin', among other things.

Oh yeah, and almost all of the ones on that side had flakes of what looked like gold paper on them. You know, for Fancy Points.

No price tags on any of them. She wondered if the gold ones were, like, a bajillion lien. She definitely didn't want to make Weiss pay a bajillion bucks for a cookie, so she focused on the 'normal' half of the case.

"So many yummy looking cookies," Ruby breathed, getting a pleased chuckle from Mr. Wafer. She instinctively raised a hand to press it to the glass of the case, but Weiss quickly reached out and grasped her wrist, jerking her hand back down and giving her a pointed look.

Ruby gave her a small pout but didn't argue. Dad was always chewing her out for doing that too.

"What do you think?" she asked her partner. "I can't choose."

Weiss turned to inspect the case. "I don't know. I kind of want a banana nut muffin because I didn't have any breakfast either…"

Ruby gasped. "I didn't even see those! I love banana nut muffins!"

Weiss tilted her head at her. "Really? I would have thought they weren't sweet enough for you."

Ruby shook her head. "Nope! They're super yummy. And they're still pretty sweet. And nutty. Although I've always wondered what the heck a banana nut is."

Weiss opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Then opened it again, then closed it again. She turned to Mr. Wafer with a "you see what I have to deal with?" look that Mr. Wafer answered with a suppressed grin.

"Two banana nut muffins, please," she said.

Ruby was happy with that. Banana nut muffins weren't her absolute favorite, but she _did_ like them, and if Weiss did too then that was even more awesome!

She had to double take when she saw the price that rang up on the register, though, as Weiss swiped her scroll to pay. _Sixteen _lien for two muffins? What in the heck? They weren't even gold leafed!

No wonder the guy didn't have price tags on his stuff. Nobody would even be brave enough to order anything if they knew how much it would cost before asking for it.

Weiss apparently noticed her reaction, giving her a pat on the back. "Don't worry about it."

She worried about it. She felt quite a bit guilty about it. Sixteen bucks was about what Dad spent on a meal for the whole family when they went out to eat at fast food restaurants, which is mostly where they went when they went out. And usually Dad and Yang cooked, which would be even less. And now Weiss was dropping that much on a breakfast pastry for her. And…

"Um, how much are those cookies going to be?" she asked Mr. Wafer nervously.

"Oh, uh…" he looked at Weiss, unsure if he was supposed to answer. Weiss shook her head at him.

"Weiss, I'm gonna see it when we come back anyway!"

"Not if I leave you outside," she retorted.

"Wei-eiss!"

Weiss turned to her, exasperated. "Ruby, please. Yang gives me enough grief about spending money on the team already. I don't need you doing it too!"

Ruby scrunched her nose. "But-"

"It's okay!" Weiss cut her off. "This is literally no big deal for me, okay? Please just drop it. I want to get this for you."

"I… okay."

"Okay."

"Here you go, ladies," the baker said, passing them both their muffins and giving them heart-warming smiles.

"Thank you!" Ruby chirped.

"Thank you," Weiss echoed. "We're going to go to Cerise Moran's. We should be back in an hour or two?" She ended on a question directed to Ruby, who nodded. She couldn't imagine taking two whole hours to find clothes.

"Wonderful!" Mr. Wafer exclaimed. "Your Strawberry Rubles will definitely be ready for you then."

Ruby let out a little gasp. "Did you just name those after _me_?!"

Mr. Wafer gave her a wink and a smile.

"Come on, doofus," Weiss said with a smile of her own, hooking a hand around Ruby's bent elbow and pulling her to the door.

"Weiss, the best cookies in all of Remnant are named after _me_!"

Weiss clearly tried and extra clearly failed to hide a pleased grin.

Ruby let herself be guided over to an intricate white stone bench, which was decorated with pretty swirls and flower patterns. Weiss sat down with her elegant sweep-one-hand-to-tuck-her-skirt-under-her movements and looked at Ruby expectantly.

"You don't wanna go shopping now?" Ruby asked.

Weiss shook her head. "Not with food. They'd probably just kick us out. Even if they don't, it's bad manners." She said that last part with a look like Ruby should know that already.

"Okay!"

Ruby plopped down next to Weiss and scooted her butt a bit to get comfy. She took a big bite out of her muff-

"Mmmph! Rish ish dericious!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Were you never taught to not talk with food in your mouth?"

Ruby quickly chewed so she could swallow and respond. The buttery, nutty deliciousness stayed in her mouth even after the muffin wasn't. "I was, but some things are too important to say to spend time waiting to finish chewing."

Weiss rolled her eyes again, this time also shaking her head. "You're hopeless," she mumbled, taking a tiny, princessy bite out of her own muffin.

Her eyes went wide.

"I know, right?!" Ruby laughed. "It's _soooo _good!"

Weiss slowly chewed and swallowed, nodding in agreement just as slowly. "Okay," she finally said. "It's a bit more forgivable in this case."

Ruby laughed again and bumped shoulders with Weiss.

"Hey," she said softly, waiting for Weiss to look at her before finishing. "Thank you."

Weiss pressed her lips together and looked away. "Thank you, too," she replied, just as softly.

"What the frickity frack are _you_ thanking _me_ for?" Ruby asked incredulously.

Weiss didn't answer right away. "... For… being here, I suppose."

"Being h-Weiss, _you're_ the one that brought me out here to buy _me_ things! Thank _you_ for being here!"

"I just m-I… nevermind." She took another bite of her muffin and watched the fountain.

Ruby considered pressing, but it didn't seem like an angry or frustrated 'nevermind'. It seemed like she just wanted to think about something else.

A comfortable silence passed over them as they munched on their pastries. Weiss watched the fountain, and Ruby sneakily watched Weiss.

It was really neat to see how… peaceful Weiss looked right now. The same way she'd looked when they were looking out over Beacon from the roof of their dorm. The same way she'd looked out the window when they were crossing the bridge earlier today. People seemed to stress her out, but pretty places? They relaxed her.

It was good to know these things, as a partner, team leader, friend.

Speaking of being a good leader…

"Hey, Weiss?"

Weiss smiled, still watching the fountain. "Yes, Ruby?"

"About Yang being upset about you paying for the team and stuff…"

Weiss frowned and turned towards her. Ruby felt kinda guilty for ruining her good mood, but this would be quick! And hopefully it would make sure this thing _wouldn't_ ruin Weiss' mood ever again.

"Please don't be mad at her for that. I… I know that you have a lot of money and it's not really a big deal to you, but it is to us." Weiss opened her mouth to say something, but Ruby rushed forward. "Wait! Let me finish, please."

Weiss closed her mouth slowly, then nodded.

"So… so you know how we're not all that rich, right? Well, it's 'cause all we have is Dad on intermediate academy professor income. We… we used to have more, back when Mom was around. They were huntsmen, and that made a lot more money. Then Mom… you know. And Dad gave up Hunting, retired and became a professor. So… we haven't had much. We had to move into a smaller house after Mom… yeah. And Yang basically filled in for Mom when it came to raising me, started taking care of , like, cooking and getting us both ready for school and stuff. And so she was a lot more aware of our, like, money problems or whatever."

She was having trouble figuring out how to word this. She didn't want to say they were poor, 'cause they weren't. There were a lot of people out there that had less than their family did. And it would feel like she was saying Dad wasn't doing enough, and that definitely wasn't true either.

"Yang used to skip lunches, you know."

Weiss blinked at her, wide-eyed.

Ruby cleared her throat and continued. "At school. The cafeteria lunches got more expensive one year. Something about budget cuts. And Dad didn't realize, and kept giving us the same amount of money for lunch each week. And it wasn't enough. So twice a week Yang would skip lunch so that I could still eat and Dad didn't need to give us more money. Dad and I didn't even know she was doing it until she graduated and went to Signal."

"You didn't notice her not eating anything at lunch?" Weiss asked.

"We didn't have lunch together. I was two grades behind her, we had different schedules."

"Oh. Right." Weiss huffed a little laugh. "Hard to picture you two _not_ being in class together."

Ruby smiled at that. "I definitely prefer this."

Weiss nodded absently.

"It's just… a sore spot for her, you know? The money stuff?"

Weiss sighed and nodded more actively. "I'm sorry. I didn't…. I don't even know how to… I've never had to skip lunch before. I've never had to… worry, I guess?"

Now Ruby was nodding. "I know. And you d-"

"I feel guilty and I don't know why," Weiss cut her off. She was staring at the fountain again-or rather, past it, through it, a thousand yard stare that accented by a slightly furrowed brow. "Or I know why, but not what could have been differently. I don't-"

"Weiss!"

Weiss snapped out of her inner turmoil and turned to Ruby.

"Don't feel guilty. Don't worry about it. I wasn't telling you this to make you feel guilty about growing up rich, I just wanted you to understand why Yang is so sensitive about taking your money. It's a pride thing. But please don't… We're happy, and growing up the way we did shaped who we are, and we both like who we are. So don't feel guilty, okay?"

"Okay," Weiss quietly replied, though the crease between her eyebrows didn't go away.

"Sorry," Ruby grimaced. "I didn't mean to… let's just go back to enjoying our muffins, yeah?"

Weiss nodded absently again and went back to staring at/through the water fountain, nibbling on her muffin periodically.

Hmph. Ruby - 2, Weiss' Sadness - 1.

Ruby still wanted to ask about that thing with Blake, and what Blake had meant about Weiss "being a Schnee", but now was definitely _not_ the time.

She wasn't sure if she was supposed to talk about something else or not though. Weiss had wanted to be distracted from her sad thoughts, but on the other hand she looked like she was zenning out again while looking at the fountain. If that made her relax, then would Ruby jabbering about something random hurt more than it helped?

When Ruby finished her muffin, Weiss was only halfway through hers. Ruby spent a couple minutes playing with the muffin wrapper, trying and failing to fold it into cool shapes. It was too soft to hold any form for very long.

She switched to watching the fountain like Weiss was, trying to see what her partner was so captivated by. It was pretty, a white stone statue of the Lady of Light as the centerpiece, hooded and blindfolded, a lantern held high in one hand serving as the spout. The water itself was also pretty; crystal clear, spraying up in a wide arc and falling down into the pool with a relaxing _pitter-pat_ sound. It was neat to think that somebody _made_ this statue. They'd have to be super talented to be able to make such a pretty statue _and_ make it shoot water. How did that even work? How do you get a statue around the pipes for the fountain? Maybe they, like, made the statue in two halves and then stuck them together with the pipes in between? Or may-

"You ready to go?" Weiss asked, standing up and folding her muffin wrapper meticulously.

"Sure!" Ruby hopped up and looked around for a trash can. Aha! There was one a little ways away. She held her hand out for Weiss' wrapper. "Here, gimme. I'll throw there away."

"Thank you," Weiss replied, dropping the paper in Ruby's hand.

"Yep!" Ruby slipped into her semblance and skipped over to the trash can. Skipping in this form was still way faster than other people could sprint, so she was back at Weiss' side in a flash.

Weiss watched the petals that Ruby spawned around her float down to the ground for a long moment, tracing the path of one petal in particular that Ruby wasn't sure if or why it was special. When that petal touched the grass, Weiss looked up.

"Shall we?" She waved a hand in a very princess-y manner towards a store that read 'Cerise Moran Clothing'.

"Yeah! Who's Cersei Moron?"

Weiss rolled her eyes at the (deliberate) mispronunciation. "You two are both ridiculous," she mumbled to herself, leaving Ruby to wonder who the other person she was talking about was. "She's a fashion designer from Atlas that started her own clothing line, that then evolved into her own franchise."

"Neat!"

"Indeed. She's actually the one that designed that blouse you liked."

"Whoa! That's awesome!"

"Mm."

They got to the door, a big glass thing that matched the shop windows, and Ruby could make out a really fancy looking open space. There were shiny things and shoes and stuff on tables spaced around, and pretty shirts and skirts and dresses around the walls.

It looked awwwwesome!

Weiss reached out to the door handle, then held it closed and turned to Ruby.

"Ruby?"

"Yes?" Ruby asked, bouncing excitedly.

"Behave."

She said it like a command, and her super serious glare made Ruby take a step back.

"O-of course!"

"That means no yelling, no running around, no semblancing, no touching everything in the store. I know you're excited, but _behave_."

"I will!" Ruby protested, slowly deflating. She didn't do all that stuff! She just… expressed her happiness when she was happy.

… Which usually involved yelling and running and semblancing and touching stuff and hugging.

"I will," she repeated, more assuredly. Weiss looked up and down her face for a couple seconds before giving her a nod and pulling the door open.

The place smelled flowery-not roses, but something lighter. Ruby didn't know enough about flowers that weren't roses to be able to place the exact scent, but it was nice. The place looked even more spacious without the tinted glass in the way, and it had soft yellow lighting that made it feel cozy and warm, matched by the dark wood flooring and walls. And all of the clothes looked fancy and awesome.

Behind the counter on the far side of the store there was a pretty, platinum blonde lady in a grey suit jacket with a pink button down shirt and a high-waisted darker pink skirt underneath. A bell on the door chimed as Weiss and Ruby walked in, and the sound caught her attention. Her eyes went wide when they saw Weiss.

"Miss Schnee!" she cried out nervously.

Ruby noticed Weiss subtly cringe at her last name, but… what was that about?

The worker lady bustled toward them, smoothing out her hair and skirt as she approached. "Welcome back! How can I help you today?"

"Hello," Weiss said. "This is my friend that I mentioned earlier this week." She gestured at Ruby.

Haha! Weiss called Ruby her friend!

"Ah yes," she said, giving Ruby an up-and-down inspection that looked really disapproving. "Welcome. And is this the cloak we're color matching?" the lady asked, looking at Ruby's hooded cape like she was trying to either dissect it or burn it with her eyes.

The look the lady gave Ruby made Weiss' turn stone cold, but Ruby decided to ignore it.

"Yep!" Ruby chirped happily. This was so cool!

"It is. We'd like to browse a little bit before that." Her voice dripped acid.

The blonde lady quickly backed away. "Of course! Please, take your time."

From how terrified the lady looked talking to them, Ruby guessed she really did want them to take their time.

The lady returned to the counter and Weiss turned to Ruby, crossing her hands in front of her and waiting for Ruby to take the lead.

Ruby whispered with a smile, "What did you do to her? She looks like she thinks you're gonna eat her or something!"

The joke made Weiss frown, though. What the frick? "I didn't… I just told her my last name." Apparently she didn't realize Ruby meant her glare and mean voice just now.

"Oh. Why would that make her scared of you?"

Weiss gave her a sad, 'oh you silly girl' smile and didn't respond.

Okay…

"Uh. So… where should I start?"

Weiss smiled at that. "Wherever you'd like. If you want to see the blouse I was talking about, it's over here."

"Oooh, yeah!" Weiss lead her over to the left wall. Ruby started skipping, but then quickly stopped because she remembered Weiss had _just_ told her to behave.

It _was_ just like Weiss' shirt. A pretty white, with light blue bits decorating it, silver buttons down the middle. There were some doily-looking bits coming out of the frocket that looked nice. She pointed at it. "I like this stuff! The one you have doesn't have that, does it?"

Weiss shook her head. "Lace."

"Huh?" That seemed like a weird response.

"That type of fabric. It's called lace."

"Oh. I thought lace was what adult ladies wore when they wanted to look, you know…"

Weiss quirked an eyebrow up. "Sexually attractive?"

Ruby's cheeks went red. "Yeah, that."

With a small smile, Weiss nodded. "Lots of lingerie _does_ have lace. They're not mutually exclusive, though."

"Yeah. I just thought lace was only a term for sexy lady stuff for some reason. I dunno."

Weiss half rolled her eyes. "Anyway, this color palette was what I was looking at before." She pointed at a card thing that was embedded in the wall that had a table with color scheme names and boxes of colors to their right. Was that all the different colors the shirts came in? That was so cool!

"This is the one I wanted to get you, but with red adornments instead of green."

Ruby looked at where Weiss' finger lined up, a row with black and green and silver. She frowned at the color scheme name. "What's a Slytherin?"

"I have no idea."

"So black cloth, green lacy bits, and silver… what?"

"Buttons."

"Oh! Nice. So they'll match the buttons on _your _shirt!"

Weiss tilted her head at Ruby. "Yes. And your eyes."

Oh yeah. That was a good point.

"Are they _actual_ silver?" she asked, eyes wide.

"Most likely."

"Whoa. How expensive is this?"

Weiss frowned. "Please stop worrying about the price, Ruby," she grumbled, sounding a little annoyed.

"No no! I just meant… like, I'm just curious how much rich people spend on their clothes. Putting _actual_ silver buttons on your clothes and stuff seems… crazy."

Weiss actually chuckled a little bit at that. "Yes, it is a bit… extravagant. Pretty, though. And I'm sure it'll look great on you."

Ruby smiled at the compliment. "Aww. thanks."

Weiss gave her a small, awkward lip twitch that was probably supposed to be a smile and looked away.

"Do you want to see some of the other things? There are some nice blouses and skirts and pants you might like."

Ruby rocked forward and back on the balls of her feet. "Sure! I think I need some new jeans…" She looked down at her black jeans, one knee faded to a dark grey and the other with a series of tiny rips.

Weiss snorted. "Well I doubt they have anything in denim here, but I'm sure we can find another option."

"Aw, I like jeans."

"What about just a nice pair of slacks like this?" Weiss brought her over to a pair of pants that looked like fancy people dress pants. They flared out a little bit at the feet, looked like they were made to fit really tight around the hips, and there not one but _two_ buttons at the waist, both covered by fabric so they weren't visible when you put the pants on.

"Aren't these for, like, fancy business suits or whatever?"

Weiss gave her a flat stare. "Ruby, they're slacks. You can wear them in more than just formal settings."

"Oh."

"You could be wearing them right now instead of your jeans, with that polo, and look perfectly fine. It would be the same as what you've got on now but a little classier."

"Oh. Okay. Should I get them, then?"

Weiss nodded. "You can try them on in the fitting room in a bit. Let's find some other stuff for you to try on too."

Right. Fitting rooms. She could try on _all_ the fancy clothes! Maybe she'd look princessy like Weiss.

… Probably not, though.

"Ooh, I like this." Weiss stopped in front of a grey three-button vest with a faint floral pattern in a lighter grey on it. She looked at the color card thing. "Look, there's a red version. Black slacks, maybe a black button down shirt, and a red vest? I bet you'd look great."

Yet another compliment for Ruby to smile at! "That wouldn't look too fancy-formally?"

"I don't think so, though it would be significantly more formal than anything you currently have. Maybe you could do that for special occasions?"

Ruby nodded. It felt kinda like she was a dress up doll that Weiss really wanted to play with. She wondered if she'd gone shopping much with a friend before.

"Did you used to clothes shopping with other people, before? Like Winter or someone?"

Weiss' tiny smile faded away. "Yes. With Winter a lot, before she left for Atlas Academy. Only a couple times with her after that, when she was on break." She frowned a bit. "We used to shop with our mother, too, before... " She trailed off.

"Before?" Ruby prompted.

Weiss took a deep breath. "Nothing. Yes, I used to go shopping with my sister. Yes, it's been a while, and I've mostly shopped alone the past few years. Yes, I'm excited right now. Let's move on."

'_Woops.'_

That was definitely wrong…

But!

But Weiss had said she was excited right now!

"Okay! Sorry! I'll try the vest! And the pants! And the shirt! Wait, where's the shirt?"

Weiss looked around the wall. "Hm… Ah, how about that one?"

It was a long sleeved beige shirt, with two columns of dark green buttons down the center-one of which was just a decorative addition on the outside, because having to button up eighteen different buttons would be awwwwful. There was no front pocket, and the collars were thin and hugged the sleeve tightly, with a bit of dark green doily-er, lace, coming out from underneath it.

"Is there a black one?" was her first question.

Weiss squinted at the color card. "Mmmmm, yes! Black with white buttons and lace."

"Would it need to be black and red?"

"No," Weiss said lightly. "White's a good neutral, and you _can_ have more than two colors in your outfit, you know."

"Pffft, I know that… now," she joked.

Weiss smiled a teensy bit.

"What's on the other wall?" Ruby asked, already moving over to it. She saw a few polos, a cardigan (which Ruby knew from glimpses at Yang's fashion magazines was what a sweater with buttons down the middle), and-AAAH!

There was a light jacket, brown to look like leather but seemed to be some sort of fabric, with sweet looking buckles and buttons on it on the shoulders and cuffs and hem.

It. Looked. Awesoooome!

!

She was about to slip into her semblance to run over when Weiss' hand clamped around her wrist, rooting her in place.

"That's the men's section, Ruby."

"But! But but!"

"What?"

Ruby pointed. "But that jacket is awesome!"

Weiss followed Ruby's finger. She stared at the jacket for a long couple of seconds, blank faced, before finally frowning slightly.

"I think it's a bit… punkish?"

"Yeah!"

Weiss rolled her eyes at that. "Either way, it's a men's jacket, so-"

"But maybe one of the really really small ones would fit me!" Ruby tugged.

After meeting Ruby's eyes for a moment, Weiss sighed heavily and walked with her to the jacket, still gripping Ruby's wrist-and kinda cutting off the blood flow to her poor fingers, but that was a small price to pay for getting to check out the jacket.

"Wonderful," Weiss muttered, looking at the color card. "Brown, grey, and beige. Men's fashion at it's finest."

"There's nothing wrong with this brown one!" Ruby chirped. "It looks super sweet!"

She reached out to touch the fabric. It was rough, almost corduroy on the outside, but the inside was lined with something soft and silky to make it comfy to wear. The buckles were polished silver metal, probably steel or some sort of alloy.

"You really like this, don't you?" Weiss asked, looking like she _very_ much wanted Ruby to say 'no'.

"Yep!"

Weiss sighed again, her eyes moving up to the ceiling while she slowly shook her head.

"Fine. We'll see if they have one that fits you."

"Woohoo!"

Ruby gave her partner a super tight hug from the side and lifted her off her feet.

"Eep!" Weiss squeaked, just like she had last time.

"Thank you, Weiss!"

"Put me down, you dunce!"

Ruby giggled and set Weiss gently back on her feet.

Weiss huffed and straightened out her shirt and the pretty shawl/cape thing she was wearing. "That's a good amount of things to try in the changing room. Let's go talk to the lady."

"Okay!"

They approached Blonde Lady together. She looked up at them and smiled, though she still looked a bit apprehensive with Weiss glaring at her.

"Hi! What can I do for you?"

"My friend has a few things she'd like to try on," Weiss answered curtly.

Blonde Lady turned to Ruby. "Of course! What were you looking for?"

Ruby bounced a little. "Okay, so that jacket over there?" She pointed back at her favorite article of clothing EVER.

"The… men's jacket?"

Weiss sighed again.

"Yeah! I was wondering if you have any that are small enough to fit me."

Blonde Lady blinked at her. "I suppose we can check. Let me measure you real quick."

"I… uh, okay?"

'_Measure me? What?'_

The lady got one of those plastic rollup rulers and walked around the desk. She started measuring Ruby's body, wrapping the ruler thing around her shoulders, her hips, lining it down her arm, from shoulder to wrist, then her torso, from the base of her neck to her waist. She muttered the numbers to herself the whole while.

"We _also_ wanted to see some other things," Weiss said, looking at Ruby pointedly.

"Oh right!" Ruby started pointing across the store at the things Weiss had like. "Those pants, that vest, that fancy shirt, and… was that it? Oh! And the fancy shirt-uh, blouse-that we're getting with this red." Ruby gripped her cloak at the shoulder and gave it a wiggle.

"Ah, yes. We do need to do that," Blonde Lady murmured. "And what colors on these items?"

"Ummm. Black pants, black fancy shirt, red vest?" Ruby glanced at Weiss for confirmation and got an approving nod.

Blonde Lady measured her legs now, hip to knee, knee to ankle, then around her hips. Mumbling the numbers to herself, she straightened up and walked back around the table to write them down on a clipboard.

"Alright. I'll go get them from the back. Feel free to wait in the changing room." She pointed toward the wall to the right-oh, there it was!, then bustled the back through a door in the back wall.

Ruby walked over to the door to the changing room, amused that she hadn't noticed it before. It was the same material as the wall it was set on, and almost flush with it. The only real giveaway that it was even there was the small rectangle of gold where a door handle would normally be.

She glanced back to Weiss, mostly just to check on her. She was distracted. She'd wandered over to one of the tables with jewelry on them and was looking at something. Ruby walked over to her side.

It was a pair of fishhook earrings, gold hooks and cap from which dangled blue gemstones, probably sapphires, that were cut to look like Water Dust crystals.

"Those are really pretty," Ruby said quietly.

"Mm," Weiss responded just as softly, hooking one of her skinny fingers around one of the sapphires and pulling it closer.

"Wanna get 'em?"

Weiss looked over at her. "I didn't think blue was your color."

"I meant for you, silly."

"Ah." Weiss turned back to the earrings. "We're not here for me."

Ruby resisted the urge to groan. "Wei-eiss! You're getting all this awesome stuff for me, you should get something for yourself too!"

Weiss shook her head. "I'm not doing something awesome. I'm just making up for being shitty to you before."

"But I already forgave you!"

"I didn't."

Ruby stopped short. What the frickity frack was she supposed to say to that?

An awkward silence settled over them. Ruby felt like it was choking her, like she needed to say something to make it go away and make Weiss feel better. But… what? She could jabber about anything to make the silence go away, but that would _annoy_ Weiss, not make her cheer up.

"Well… well if you don't get them for yourself, then you're gonna force _me_ to get them _for _you!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her. "How are you going to do that?"

"Uh…" Ruby hadn't thought that far ahead. Yang definitely wouldn't agree to use Dad's card for this, as the earrings were probably pretty expensive…

"We get paid for the hunts we're gonna go on, even the training ones. I'll just save up that money and buy these for you!"

Weiss looked completely and utterly unconvinced.

"I'll do it! You just watch!"

Weiss smiled a teensy bit and rolled her eyes. "Go to the changing room, dolt."

Pouting, Ruby turned and shuffled away.

She was gonna do it! Then Weiss was gonna be all like 'Dang, I guess I shoulda believed Ruby 'cause she's awesome and the best partner ever'.

Not that Weiss would ever say those things out loud. But Ruby could make her think them!

The changing room was _way_ bigger than she'd expected. Spacious, with hanger racks along the walls on her left and right, with benches underneath them-probably for setting stuff down on. The wall in front of her wasn't a wall, but rather three floor-to-ceiling mirrors arranged like half of a hexagon, letting her see herself in multiple angles.

Ripped, faded jeans, a wrinkled polo whose collar insisted on folding along a random crease it wasn't supposed to, and grungy boots with laces that had tassels so frayed they looked like hand fans.

Yeah, she was definitely out of place here.

There was a light knock at the door, then it was pushed open slightly.

"I have your clothes, miss," Blonde Lady announced.

"Sweet!" Ruby pulled the door open and was handed four hangers, one at a time, with the things she'd asked for. "Hey! By the way!" She hushed her voice as Blonde Lady turned back to her.

Ruby swallowed. "Those pretty blue earrings that Weiss is looking at, how much are they?"

Blonde Lady turned to glance at the earrings Weiss was still inspecting.

"Ah, those. I believe they're fifteen hundred before taxes."

Ruby blanched.

"Okay, thanks!" she squeaked, prompting the lady to leave with a nod.

That was going to take a while to save up for...

She pushed the issue from her mind and immediately plopped the three formal, Weiss-y clothes on one of the hanger racks and started pulling on the jack-

Crap. Her cloak was in the way.

She unfastened the pins Uncle Qrow had given her and laid the cloak out on a bench.

'_Not letting you go, Mom,' _she thought. '_Just putting you down for a second.'_

She pulled the jacket on and checked herself out in the mirrors.

She looked freaking bad-A.

The jacket was absolutely awesommmmmmmmmme! It was incredibly comfy and soft, the silk lining feeling cool against her bare arms. The fact that she had her goofy polo collar competing with the jacket's foldless colar looked a little strange, but that was her polo's fault, not the jacket's.

She burst out of the room and threw her arms and legs out to the side in a 'ta-da!' fashion.

Weiss turned at the noise of the noisy entrance, then rolled her eyes when she saw Ruby. "Of _course_ you tried that on first."

Ruby just flashed her pearly whites. "What do you think?"

Weiss sighed and looked Ruby over, slowly starting to nod. "It looks… appropriate."

"Huh?"

She waved a hand. "It just looks like your style."

Ruby rocked on the balls of her feet. "So you like it?"

Weiss smiled begrudgingly and nodded.

"Yes!"

"It's a little wide at the shoulders, though."

"Pffft!" Now Ruby waved her hand. "It's perfectly awesome!"

Weiss rolled her eyes again. "Go try on the other things now, dolt. I want to see how it looks."

"'Kay!"

It took her a while to get all the other stuff on. Plus, it felt really awkward to take her shirt and pants off in sorta-kinda public. Also, there were a lot of buttons on the fancy shirt, even taking into account that she only actually had to button half of them. Figuring out which button went where was also tricky. The vest was easy, though, and the only difficulty with the pants was that it was a little tight around her thighs and hard to squeeze her legs through.

The vest was a deep red, similar to her cloak but a slightly different hue. The floral pattern on this one was a lighter red, almost pink.

Overall, the outfit kinda made her feel like one of those noble lords in the fantasy shows. House colors? Black and red! House sigil? A rose! House words? Uh… Uh…. Gotta go fast?

No, that was dumb.

She was scratching her head trying to come up with a good motto for House Rose when she walked out of the changing room.

"Tuck _in_, you buffoon!"

"Huh? Oh, woops."

Ruby quickly tucked the shirt in, then had to untuck the vest because she'd accidently tucked that in too. Weiss was frowning at her with crossed arms all the while.

Straightening out the vest and pants, Ruby gave her partner a meek smile. She felt really self conscious now, standing in front of a legit princess while in fancy clothes that she probably was somehow managing to make look bad.

To get rid of her own unease, she decided to joke.

"Ruby of House Rose, first of her name, student of Beacon and defender of Vale, at your service!" She bowed.

It mostly just confused Weiss, but at least she didn't feel so awkward now.

"Straighten up, you goofball. Let me see…" Weiss looked Ruby up and down as she walked up.

She put her hands on Ruby's shoulders and rolled them back a little, forcing Ruby to straighten her posture. Then she put a finger under Ruby's chin to lift it. Then she ran her fingers through Ruby's hair, bringing a bit of order to the unruly mess.

"Hmmmm…"

She stepped back and looked Ruby up and down again.

"What do you think?" Ruby asked, kinda nervous. If Weiss had gone through all this trouble and effort to find her nice clothes and she ended up looking bad in them, she'd feel _terrible_.

Weiss smiled widely. "I think you look wonderful."

"You do?!" Ruby squeaked.

Weiss pursed her lips, but she was still smiling as she nodded.

"I agree," Blonde Lady added off from the side, behind the counter. Weiss turned to glare at her, but the compliment made Ruby smile even more.

"Yeah?"

Blonde Lady nodded. "You look quite sharp."

"Heehee," Ruby intoned happily, rocking side to side.

"Do _you_ like them?" Weiss asked her.

"Yeah! I feel pretty and fancy!"

Weiss huffed a little chuckle. "Well you _look_ pretty and fancy."

Ruby blushed gratefully. "Thanks."

"You want to try on the, uh, fancy blouse now?" Weiss both smiled and cringed as she called it a 'fancy blouse'.

"Woohoo, Weiss clothes!" she answered, skipping over to Blonde Lady, who held out a black and green version of the blouse in question.

Ugh, green.

Whatever, it was gonna be Mom's-birthday-gift-cloak red in the final version.

After fumbling to get out of the million-buttons-button down, she pulled on the blouse. It was really pretty, and the satin black was shiny. Some places where the light hit it just right it looked like a dark purple, which was neato. And it fit well. It was sleeveless, and armholes were low enough that they didn't tickle or each her armpits, but not too low that her bra showed or it was too skin-showy.

The green was still yucky, though. Ruby did her best to ignore it.

She walked back out to Weiss again.

As soon as Weiss saw her, she wrinkled her nose.

"Wha?!" Ruby cried. "What's wrong?! What's-?" She mimicked the face Weiss was making.

"Nothing!" Weiss replied quickly. "Just… green."

Ruby gasped. "You think green is gross too?!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Not gro-"

"I always said green is for grass and trees and puke!"

Weiss wrinkled her nose again.

"... I thought it was funny," Ruby added lamely.

"Well you're a dolt. Now turn around, I want to see how it fits across the back."

Ruby spent a good thirty seconds getting spun around and inspected, like what Ruby did in her RPGs at character creation, but with more pokey fingernails.

"Little loose across the shoulder blades, but otherwise very nice."

"Uh, thanks," Ruby said.

How does one judge the fabric of a shirt across shoulder blades?

"Mm. I like it. Let's let… _her_ get the color match for your cloak."

Ruby squinted at her partner. She couldn't even remember what Weiss was mad at Blonde Lady for now.

"Go," Weiss commanded, giving Ruby a light push toward the changing room.

Heading back to the changing room, Ruby stopped short when Weiss called out to her again.

"Hey, would you mind doing me a favor?" Weiss asked, looking _incredibly_ self conscious.

"Of course!"

"Could… could you change back into the other outfit, instead of your polo?" She stared intently at her toes as she ground them into the wooden floorboards.

"Y-yeah, sure!"

Weiss smiled at her foot at the answer.

Ruby hurried back into the room and donned the billion-button down shirt and the vest again, then grabbed her cloak and brought it to Blonde Lady at the counter.

"Ah, thank you," she said, pulling out her scroll and snapping a few pictures of the cloak. "A pretty red."

"Thanks! I thought so too." +

Weiss walked up to her side and fiddled with her collar a bit, a pleased smile on her face.

"Okay," she said. "Now we need to do something about those shoes?"

Ruby looked down at the grungy boots that she had her nice dress pants tucked into. Then she looked at Weiss' pretty, pointy high heels and an immediate sense of alarm shot through her.

What was Weiss' version of acceptable shoes?

D:

Weiss gave her a smile. "Have you ever worn heels before?"

Ruby gulped.


	18. Thaw 2-3

**Sorry for the late update! My coworker got fired and now I'm doing a 2 person job alone and I have a lot less time to write :(**

**Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Stupid! Lady… stilts-stupid! Why wou-aaahk!"

Weiss rolled her eyes as her dolt of a partner clung to her arm for dear life. She'd convinced Ruby to practice walking in her new heels as they continued shopping, and the pain in her shoulder socket as her arm was yanked around was reminding her of the price of being Ruby's walking coach.

"Weiss, save me!"

"Ruby, you're being ridiculous."

"These _shoes _are ridiculous!"

"No, they're classy and pretty."

She looked down at the black, box-toed heels Ruby was stumbling around in. Ruby hadn't wanted to get box-toed heels, saying they weren't "pointy and princessy" like Weiss', but they fit the shape of her smaller feet better, and Weiss had finally convinced her into them.

Of course, it took them five times longer to walk anywhere, and Ruby spent every breath on cursing her "stupid lady stilts".

In a display of extreme empathy, Weiss was carrying five of the six bags of clothes and jewelry they'd gotten. Each bag was from a different store, with a variety of styles. One had a formal black dress that Weiss had insisted on despite Ruby's protests that she wasn't "princessy enough" for a dress. Ruby held the last bag in one hand and the box of cookies, half of which Ruby had shoved in her mouth before they'd even had lunch, under that arm. Her other hand was cutting off the blood flow in Weiss' hand, close cut fingernails somehow managing to dig into Weiss' wrist.

Weiss was also carrying the bag with the three canvases, the paint palette, and the table easel she'd gotten from the art supply store. Nothing too fancy-she wasn't a good enough artist to warrant spending a lot of money on that hobby. But they were nice to have.

"But they're all . stubbyyy!" Ruby whined. "Look!"

For the third time, Ruby kicked one of her feet up into the air and wobbled as she tried to hold it there. She would have fallen on her butt if she wasn't holding on to Weiss.

"It makes my foot look like a rectangle!"

"You're a goof."

"Wahhh!"

Weiss sighed. "Ruby, give yourself a couple years to let your feet get a bit longer and the… pointy princess shoes won't look as strange in your size."

"But they don't!"

Weiss rolled her eyes again. "Just focus on walking. Keep your posture strai-"

"My calves hurt!"

"If you're gonna keep whining like this then you can just walk barefoot."

"Really?" Ruby asked, looking up at Weiss hopefully.

"I-no! You're not supposed to _want_ to take your shoes off, Ruby!"

Ruby pouted. "Oh."

"You kn-fine." Weiss stopped and pulled Ruby toward a bench next to the sidewalk. Their dorm was only another minute walk away, but any more of this ridiculous whining and she was liable to explode. "Put your boots back on. Which bag are they in?"

Ruby flopped onto the bench with a groaning sigh of relief. "Oh thank Dust! Get these evil fiends off my feet!"

She kicked off the heels like a baboon, sending them scraping across the concrete. Weiss quickly rushed over to pick them up and shot her partner a glare.

Of course, Ruby didn't notice, yanking out her scruffy boots from her bag and quickly shoving them on her feet.

"So, like, these boots are great 'cause they don't try to CRUSH MY TOES!"

Weiss crossed her arms and glared at Ruby even harder. "I let you take the heels off and you get even _louder_?"

Ruby huffed and crossed her arms back. "I let you mrah hrah rah rah rere rah," she muttered to herself in a mocking, bossy tone.

"Stop that!" Weiss demanded.

Ruby huffed again.

"Brat," Weiss grumbled at her, though she had to resist smiling at the image of childish, pouting Ruby in dress pants and a dress shirt and a designer vest. It was a weirdly amusing juxtaposition.

Still with a grumpy face, Ruby held out a hand to Weiss.

"I can carry more bags now at least."

"Yes," Weiss agreed, sliding three bags onto Ruby's arm. "Yes you can."

"Darn, was hoping you'd be nice."

"Never," Weiss teased with a grin. "Now come on, we're almost back at our room. We can put these bags down and spend a couple hours relaxing before we go to dinner."

Ruby half-gasped and gave her a smile, mouth half open in excitement. "You wanna play some vidya games?"

Weiss sighed. She'd _wanted_ to play the piano, and maybe do some sketches for a painting she might do later. But that face…

Ruby picked something up in her expression, though. "Do you wanna, like, play music or something first, maybe?" she asked.

Weiss nodded quickly.

"Yes!" Ruby cheered, pumping a tiny fist in celebration.

Confused, Weiss cocked her head to the side. "You're… happy I want to play music?" That was… nice. If Ruby enjoyed her music, this partnership would be a _lot_ easier to manage. And having a fan was pretty neat too.

"Oh, I meant, like, I was happy I guessed what you wanted right. But I also do like listening to your music!" She rushed out the second sentence, as if worried Weiss would be offended by her first answer.

She hadn't been. She was also happy Ruby guessed what she wanted correctly, and was okay with it. It was easier than having to ask and worrying about feeling guilty for not wanting to do something Ruby wanted to do.

Not that that mattered! Making sure Ruby was happy wasn't a main priority or anything.

Ruby hopped to her feet. "So what was your favorite thing we looked at today?"

Weiss thought for a moment, tilting her head to the side. "I actually really liked that Cerise Moran blouse on you. I bet when it's actually the proper color it'll be perfect on you."

Ruby gave that goofy flattered smile she had, a little one-sided grin that show the barest sliver of teeth, to her feet. "Heehee, thanks. But I meant what was your favorite thing for _you_?"

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Weiss gave Ruby a frown. She knew what her partner was doing, trying to figure out what she could get Weiss as some sort of unnecessary 'thank you' gift. When Ruby had said she'd get Weiss those earrings, it had been amusing and cute enough that Weiss hadn't felt the desire to inform the girl of the price tag, but Ruby had spent the entire day asking her what she liked in _every_ store. It was pretty obvious she was trying to figure out what to get Weiss.

"I really liked those earrings," Weiss answered. Instead of trying to convince Ruby not to get her something, she'd just say she wanted something Ruby couldn't hope to afford. Problem solved.

Ruby nodded at her feet, silent. Something in the way her brow slowly creased felt like a buildup of determination, and that very much worried Weiss.

"It's a bit expensive though," she added, trying to drive the point home. "Even for me."

Ruby nodded at her feet some more.

Okay. A tactical distraction was needed. This was Ruby she was dealing with, so there was a foolproof one to go to.

"So did you like the bakery?"

Ruby jump-skipped and turned to her with a big gasp and smile.

Yep. Easy.

"I did! It was so awesome! There were so many awesome cookies and muffins and cupcakes and what the heck even _are_ those gold cookies and holy crappoli they were all such pretty colors and Mister Wafer Baker was so nice and his hands were _huge_, like, how the heck does he make such tiny, delicate cookies with those big ol' Ursa paws? And and and that muffin was awesome, and I really liked the fountain, that bench was such a nice spot to snack."

She paused to take a breath, and Weiss quickly cut in.

"I like it too," she said simply.

Ruby smiled and nodded, whatever rambling thoughts she'd been about to continue derailed by the voice of another person.

They made more small talk on their way to their room. When they got there, Weiss set her bag of art supplies with a satisfied sigh. That had been an overall satisfying shopping trip. It was actually surprising to Weiss how much she had enjoyed shopping for someone else. And having a shopping buddy again had been nice. Even if it was Ruby.

Actually, that wasn't fair. Ruby had made it _especially_ enjoyable. She was a cheerful bundle of excitement and gratitude the entire time, and had been willing to go along with everything Weiss said, trying on a ton of different things that she clearly hadn't personally liked simply because Weiss asked her to.

"Hey, Weiss?"

Weiss turned to her partner, who had unceremoniously plopped the shopping bags she was carrying and the box of cookies onto Weiss' bed. "Yes, Ruby?"

"Can I-whatchu you smiling about?"

"What? Nothing. I'm not smiling." Weiss focused on blanking out her expression to make sure she actually wasn't smiling.

"You were totally smiling."

"No, I wasn't."

"Yuh-huh!"

"What do you _want_, Ruby?" Weiss snapped, a bit of annoyance creeping into her tone.

Ruby just gave her a grin. "I was gonna ask if I could put the clothes away later."

Weiss looked at where the bags sat on her bed, then at the bags she was holding in her own hands. "I'm not your mother, Ruby." As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she realized what a red flag they were, and the flicker across Ruby's eyelids at the words reinforced that. "I mean! Uh. Sure. Just, maybe put the bags in the closet?"

Ruby nodded, picking up the bags and grabbing the ones Weiss held out to her and heading into the bathroom closet.

'_Damn it, Weiss. Why did you say that?'_

What should she do? Should she apologize, or would calling it out like that just make it worse? In a vacuum she hadn't said anything wrong, it was just Ruby's personal history that made what she'd said an issue, and she might not want to have this shoved in her face.

But if she didn't apologize then she was basically saying she didn't know or care that she'd made a mistake and hurt Ruby, and she _did_.

Was there a way to address the issue without apologizing and putting Ruby on the spot? A way to-

"You mind if I come listen and draw again?"

Weiss blinked at Ruby in the bathroom doorway. "Oh!" Right, piano. "No, not at all." She gave Ruby a smile, though it felt awkward and forced and not at all like it would make Ruby feel better.

The subdued smile Ruby gave her in return reinforced that she was failing.

She hated failing.

"Hey, uh…" she cleared her throat, trying to figure out what to say. She'd decided to speak up and fix things but had opened her mouth before figuring out how.

Ruby looked at her quizzically. "Yeah?"

"... If you want, we can just go straight to playing Huntsman Royale."

It wasn't a perfect solution. It didn't address the fact that she was sorry for bringing up Ruby's mom. But maybe it would cheer Ruby up enough that she'd forget the insensitive thing Weiss had said.

"Are you sure? I don't wanna take you away from your music time if you'd rather do that." Ruby was clearly trying to hide her excitement, though. She'd clasped her hands behind her back and was shifting her weight from foot to foot, like she was trying to restrain herself from running or jumping or whatever hyperactive expression of joy she wanted to do.

"I'm sure," Weiss nodded.

"Woohoo!"

Ruby bounded forward and wrapped her arms around Weiss, squeezing her and lifting her into the air.

'_Of course.'_

"Come on, we still gotta beat level four!" Ruby cried, her voice trailing away because she'd run out of the room and down the hallway during the sentence.

'_Well… at least she's cheered up now.'_

Not that Ruby's happiness was a priority or anything. It was just… ideal team building, right?

Right.

She straightened out her covers where Ruby's bags had caused some wrinkles, then walked out to the living area to join her teammate.

"You think Yang's set the library on fire yet?" Ruby asked, tilting her head backwards over the couch cushions to look at Weiss upside down as Weiss got herself a glass of water from the kitchen.

"I'd be surprised if the place didn't just blow up from proximity to her," she answered, straight faced.

Ruby giggled at that. "Blake would be so maaaaaad."

Blake.

Seeing her at dinner tonight would be… stressful. She'd been mad and nasty and vindictive when Weiss had run aw-… _left_… this morning. Weiss hadn't had an issue with Blake's naive views on faunus-she just didn't know any better. But being accused of "just being a Schnee"?

What was that even supposed to mean, _just_ a Schnee? A Schnee wasn't _just_ anything. Schnees were more intelligent, educated, capable, and, in Weiss and Winter's case, powerful than any other single family Weiss knew of in Remnant. _Just_ a Schnee was still far beyond anybody else.

And the implication-probably the intending meaning of the barb, honestly-that Weiss herself was nothing more than a…

Than a what? A Schnee? What did that mean? What did Blake view as the "standard" Schnee?

Probably the same as most people. She probably thought of Weiss' father as what it meant to be a Schnee. Even though he married into the family.

And Weiss' views on faunice weren't _because_ of her father's. Yes, she'd grown up listening to him rage at the dinner table about the White Fang and the atrocities they were committing against the company and, though he raged less frequently about it, the rest of Atlas. But she'd found out herself about all the other faunice crimes, watched the news and searched online for faunus hate crimes and saw _herself_ what they'd done. She'd come to the same conclusion her father had, that faunus were evil and animalistic and wanted to hurt the world, on her _own_.

So really Blake was just ignorant. She didn't know anything about faunice _or_ the Schnee family _or_ Weiss, and she was trying to act like she had the moral hi-

"Weiss? You okay?"

"What? Oh, yes, I'm fine." She cleared her throat and walked over to the couch, glass in hand.

"You had a couple glyphs spinning around you really fast," Ruby informed her curiously.

"I did?" She hadn't noticed doing that, though she _could_ feel that her aura was a bit drained, now that she focused on it.

"Mhm. Like, _really_ fast. You looked… agitated?" She seemed unsure of the description.

"Sorry." Weiss wasn't entirely sure what she was apologizing for.

"Everything okay?" Ruby asked again.

Weiss nodded. "I'm fine," she repeated.

Ruby frowned, unconvinced. "Everything okay between you and Blake?"

'_Damn it.'_

"I don't want to talk abo-"

"Dang it, Weiss!" Ruby exclaimed, looking both grumpy and concerned.

"What?!"

"I've given you, like, six hours to think about it and talk to me, but I'm not waiting any longer! As team leader I'm ordering you to tell me what's wrong so I can be team leader-y and try to help!"

"I… no!" Weiss didn't like being ordered, especially by this underage dolt.

"You have to I'mteamleaderit'stherules!" She bounced on the couch and slid a leg under herself, turning to face Weiss head on.

"If you have to yell 'I'm team leader', are you really much o-"

"Just tell me!"

Weiss looked at Ruby for a long moment. There wasn't any anger there. Just worry. Knowing her, she likely did just want to help make things better between Weiss and Blake.

Sighing, Weiss resigned herself to this conversation. She had no idea what Ruby's own views on faunice were, but she supposed she was about to find out.

"We just had a fight."

"About?"

"... Faunice."

Ruby blinked. "What about 'em?"

Weiss waved a hand at nobody and nowhere in particular. "She just doesn't seem to know that they're… you know…" Ruby blinked at her again, uncomprehending. "Terrible?"

"... What?"

Weiss sighed.

Ruby's brow furrowed in confusion. "_Which_ faunus are terrible?"

"_All_ of them?"

"Huh?"

Weiss stayed silent, trying to figure out how to explain this.

"But how can you say all faunus are terrible if you haven't met all the faunuses? Faun… faunusi? Faunseese? Wait, what's the plural of faunus?"

"Just faunus," Weiss answered impatiently.

"Oh. Alright. But yeah, that's like… that's like saying all people with black hair are terrible. Or like-"

"But faunus _aren't_ people, Ruby!"

"Uh, what?"

"They aren't _people_. They're faunus. They're literally a different species!"

Her voice rose in volume and pitch at the end, and she physically clamped her hands down in her lap and lowered her chin to force herself to calm down.

"They're not human. They're less. They're animals."

"... Oh."

Weiss raised an eyebrow and looked at Ruby, whose eyes were wide. "Oh?"

"I just… always thought of them as humans, but they had something extra added on."

Weiss shook her head. "Not extra. Less." It wasn't that hard to understand. Humans were the greatest species on the planet, and the faunus were an aberration of humans that had the DNA of lesser species in them, so that made them less than humans.

"They are thieves and kidnappers and rapists and murderers. Do you not see what the White Fang do in this child's game you love? That's based on _real life_, Ruby!"

"But… but not _all_ of them!" Ruby seemed shocked. "I had a bunch of faunus friends growing up in Patch. They were nothing but nice! Except for Burly. Burly was a jerk. But all the other ones were nice! And there's Velvet! You met Velvet! She's super nice!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure she _acts _nice."

"I… I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?"

"Do you really think _all_ faunus are… those bad things you said?"

"I… It's not a matter of me _thinking_ they are, Ruby. They _are_. That's a fact. I just recognize it, and Blake doesn't, and apparently you don't either!"

"B… but… Okay, why do you think so?"

Ruby's face wasn't angry like Blake's had been. She just looked confused.

"I _know_ so because I am actually informed about all the terrible things they do! They've attacked, mugged, raped, kidnapped, and murdered people I've known and people my family has known for my entire life!"

Ruby's lower lip puffed out in a half pout. "But they don't-they're not all… Weiss, human people do all those things too, sometimes. You don't think all human people are all bad, do you?"

"Are we going to play this stupid game or not?" she asked, picking up her controller.

"So Blake was mad because, what, she doesn't think all faunusooses are bad?"

Weiss bit down on her lip to keep from laughing at that utterly ridiculous word. She was angry and impatient, and this was not a time for laughter.

"I _will_ walk away and go play the piano instead," she threatened.

"Okay! Okay fine! _Fiiine_! I was just trying to help."

"Well… stop it."

"_You _stop it."

"_You_… ugh, just play the… whatever."

Ruby scooted closer to her, to the point their shoulders were touching, and nudged her. "Sorryyy. Let's kill some Grimm, yeah?"

"Fine."

"Heyyyyyy," Ruby whined at her. "Cheer up! You'll get to blow up some White Fang dudes in this level too. That's good, right?"

"Mm."

"Oooooookay, shutting up now."

"Mm."

* * *

"You think Yang will even recognize me in my fancy dudette vest?"

"I hardly do and I've been around you all day."

"Awww, thanks… Wait-"

"Hand," Weiss directed as the crosswalk light turned green, holding her own. Ruby distractedly grabbed hold and they crossed together.

Needing to hold a fifteen year old's hand as they crossed the street was, of course, completely ridiculous, but that was apparently more Ruby's father's fault than her own, apparently. Weiss wondered just how much of Ruby's childish nature was _because_ she'd been treated like a child by her father and sister for so long.

This wasn't a good time to bring it up, though. Blake was already mad at her, and Yang took any excuse she could to blow up. Bringing up her only friend's issues was definitely off the table right now.

She wasn't here to make friends, of course, but it didn't hurt to have them. Ruby was even kind of nice to have around, at times. Tolerable at the very least.

"By the way, you've had sushi before, right?" she asked, more to distract herself than Ruby. They were coming up to Bento House, where Yang and Blake had apparently gotten a table already, according to Yang's message to Ruby a few minutes ago. It was a large standalone building, with a curved, red-shingled hip roof and red painted wooden pillars along the outside, giving that authentic Mistrali vibe.

Being the fan of architecture that she was, Weiss liked the place from its look alone.

"Yep! Twice." Ruby held up two fingers just in case Weiss didn't know how many ;twice' was.

"Did you like it?"

"Yeah! It was yummy _and _colorful. That's, like, a double whammy."

They reached the sidewalk and Weiss let go of Ruby's hand. The restaurant was less than half a minute away now.

"What constitutes a whammy?" Weiss asked, bemused by the word.

Ruby scrunched up her nose in thought. "Hmmm. That is a good question. I must... postulate this."

"Thaaaaat's wrong."

"What?!" Ruby turned her way, big silver eyes distraught. "Doesn't that mean, like, 'think really hard about' something?"

"No," Weiss grinned. "It means… to assume something as true for the purposes of a discussion."

Ruby scrunched her nose again. "Oh. What word was I thinking of then?"

"_I _don't know. Do you think I'm psychic or something?"

Shrugging lightly, Ruby grinned at her. "Dunno. Your semblance _is_ kinda ridiculously overpowered."

Weiss smiled at that, pleased. She thought for a moment. "Contemplate."

"_Contem_plate! Yes! That was it, thank you!"

They got to the doors of the restaurant and Ruby held one open for Weiss. Inside, the place was packed. There was a couple and two families sitting on cushioned benches near the entrance, waiting for tables most likely.

Weiss pitied them. She'd never had to wait for a table in her life. Her family always had reservations when they went out to eat, usually set by her father's slut secretary. And she wouldn't have to wait now either, as Yang and Blake were seated at a circular table far in the back.

Yang was easy to spot.

There was a host at a podium in front of them, and Weiss and Ruby approached together. He was dressed in a formal suit jacket and slacks, the professional attire making Weiss appreciate this restaurant even more. A brief look around confirmed that all the waiters were similarly dressed, though without the jackets, just black slacks and crisp, white button down shirts.

"Hi!" Ruby greeted the man happily.

"Hello," he replied graciously. "Welcome to Bento House. Table for two?"

Ruby shook her head. "My sister is already here with our other teammate. Blonde, ripped, gravity-defying boobs?"

"They're over there, Ruby," Weiss cut in, pointing and trying very hard not to laugh at that description of Yang.

"Oh, hey! Yeah, that's them."

The host nodded. "Right this way, then."

He lead them to the table, a long walk-the restaurant was surprisingly spacious-that seemed to get harder and harder as Weiss' feet felt heavier and heavier. Blake was _already_ glaring at her and she hadn't even made it to the table yet.

There would be an argument here at some point during dinner, she could feel it. And Weiss hated heated arguments-she always went silent and shorted out trying to figure out the best thing to say and ended up losing, and she _hated_ losing.

They got to the table and Ruby glanced at Weiss, a nervous worry on her face. The reason was clear: seating. The table was a circle, with Yang and Blake sitting at what was effectively twelve and nine on a clock. So Weiss would have to choose between sitting next to Blake or sitting across from her.

She was already freezing.

Weiss stood stock still and just stared at the table, trying to figure out what to do.

"A waiter will be right out to give you menus and get your drink orders," the host said, before giving a small bow and walking away.

Weiss was still frozen.

Ruby cleared her throat and pulled out the chair across from Blake, directing a jerk of her head at Weiss to indicate the seat.

Weiss sat.

Ruby sat down at the empty seat across from Yang and smiled nervously.

"Heh, soooo…." she said to break the silence. She unwrapped her silverware from the cloth napkin in front of her and started fiddling with the napkin itself, folding and unfolding the corners.

Blake's cold glare was still boring into Weiss, and Weiss noticed Yang's eyes were also narrowed at her.

'_Damn it.'_

Of course Blake had talked to Yang about their fight, probably completely ruined Yang's view of Weiss with whatever misconceived issues she had with Weiss herself.

This was bad. Weiss had tried so hard to fix things with Yang from the damaged place they had started from, and Blake had undone all that work in one afternoon.

"So how was the library, Yang? Weiss and I were trying to guess how long it would take for you to burn the whole place down."

"Mm," Yang grunted, still watching Weiss and not paying any attention to Ruby at all.

A brief moment of awkward silence before Ruby registered that she'd been ignored.

"Yang!"

Ruby balled up her napkin and lightly lobbed it across the table. The cloth smacked Yang in the face and then plopped down onto the table in front of her. One of the corners dipped into the glass of soda she had in front of her and splashed a couple drops onto the blue table cloth.

Yang slowly turned to Ruby and pursed her lips grumpily. "I disown you."

Ruby scrunched her nose. "Wat?! But you never owned me in the first place!"

Yang smiled, and the conversation with her sister seemed to ease the tenseness in her shoulders. "Uh, yeah I did, Rubes. I was given the title deed to Ruby Rose a long time ago."

"Dad would never give you that!"

Yang chuckled, and if Weiss was less wound up at the moment she might have done the same. Ruby didn't contest at all that the 'title deed to Ruby Rose' was even a thing.

"Not Dad, Ruby," Yang grinned. "Zwei."

Ruby blinked. "Z-what? Why did _Zwei _own me?!"

"Because Zwei is king of the world, Ruby," Yang answered with a tone like this was obvious. "He owns _everything_."

"... Darn, I have no argument against that."

Yang was clearly pleased that Ruby was running with the joke. "Mmmmmmhm!"

Weiss sighed. "You're both idiotic buffoons," she said with a small smile to make it clear she was joking. She hoped the little attempt at humor would be a good way to get of this thin ice she was on.

It wasn't. Yang glared at her.

Ruby didn't, though. "Nuh-uh!" she squeaked. "I'm a _way_ smarter buffoon than Yang!"

Weiss let her face fall into her hands, in part as a reaction to Ruby's ridiculous statement and, in larger part, to hide her face from Yang and Blake. The glares were making her skin itch and she didn't know what to do.

"I double disown you," Yang said to Ruby.

"You can't do that!"

"Can to."

"I don't think ownership works that way, Yang," Blake said quietly. Weiss lifted her head up cautiously to see that Blake had turned to her partner.

The itch faded.

"Pfft, whatever," Yang dismissed her. "I do what I want 'cause a pirate is free."

"Yar har, fiddle dee dee!" Ruby chirped. Yang extended a fist to her across the table that she cheerfully bumped with her own.

The sisters shared a smile at what Weiss assumed was an inside joke, Ruby letting out a little titter.

"Good evening," someone said behind Weiss. She turned to find a short waitress-like, _Ruby_-sized short, even though she was clearly in her early twenties-with shockingly blue hair behind her. Weiss was so, _so_ glad she had an excuse to turn away from the table.

"My name is Amethyst-you can call me Amy, though-and I'll be your server for today." Amethyst handed Ruby and Weiss a pair of menus. "Do you two know what you'd like to drink?" She turned to Yang and Blake before either of them could answer. "And did you two cuties decide on anything? Appetizers, maybe?"

"I'd like a water," Weiss said.

Ruby leaned forward like she was about to share a big secret. "Do you have…-" she looked both ways, then back at Amethyst "-_orange soda?_"

Amethyst's face skewed in confused amusement. "Y… ye-esss?"

Ruby's eyes narrowed. "Can I have some?" she asked, still in a pseudo-whisper.

Amethyst looked at the other girls at the table, clearly wondering what was going on. "Yes?"

Ruby nodded solemnly. "Sweet." She leaned back in her chair.

"Ruby?" Blake spoke up.

"Yeah?"

"You're very strange."

"Why does everyone keep _saying_ that?!"

Yang sighed. "Could we get a edamamama appetizer thingy?" she asked, pointing at herself and Blake.

"Sure!" Amethyst replied, jotting the order down. "Small or regular?"

"Rubes, you want some too?"

"Edamamama is the green beanie things, right?"

"Yeah."

"Sure!"

Yang turned back to the waitress. "Regular, please."

Weiss' brain froze again.

"Do you know if you'd like an appetizer, ma'am?" Amethyst asked her.

Weiss shook her head numbly, not capable of finishing a full thought because the weight of the fact that Yang had made a point not to ask her if she'd wanted anything was threatening to crush her.

"Okay!" the waitress said, annoyingly cheery. "I'll be back with your drinks and _edamame_." She left.

"_See_?" Blake grinned at Yang.

The blonde scoffed. "Whatever! Edemamamamama is way more fun to say."

"Yang!" Ruby exclaimed. A noise under the table suggested she'd accentuated her exclamation with a kick at her sister.

"Ow! What?!"

Ruby spread her arms out wide and raised her eyebrows in a 'look at me' gesture.

"_What?_" Yang repeated.

"Don't you notice anything… different about me?"

"Wh-oh! Yeah, sorry. You look very nice, Rubes."

Blake tilted her head as she looked at Ruby. "Stand up," she said. "Give us a spin."

Ruby grinned, flashing the happiness Weiss' way before standing and twirling around.

"Slower, goofball. I wanna see how it looks, not a blur."

Ruby turned in a circle slowly.

Blake gave an approving nod. "You look very nice, Ruby. Sharp."

Yang nodded. "Like 'I could kill a Grimm with my fashion sense' sharp."

Ruby beamed and gave a single, happy hop before jumping back into her seat. "Thanks! Weiss picked out this outfit. And a bunch of others. She's really good at this stuff."

Weiss smiled at that, but when she looked at the other two, Yang's grin had died and Blake was refusing to look at her.

Weiss' brain froze again.

What the Crucible was she supposed to do? If this didn't get fixed… Weiss wasn't sure she could handle four years of being hated by teammates she was supposed to be family with.

Oh Dust, going to sleep in the same room as Blake tonight was going to be fucking awful.

But she had no idea what to do.

Ruby noticed the tension between her teammates.

"So, uh… uhhhh, Blake! Did you find any cool books at library?"

Blake nodded. "A couple books in new serieses. I'll read them and see if I like 'em. If they're good I'll go to a book store and buy the sets."

Yang leaned forward. "One of 'em's a _porno_," she whispered.

"It's not-ugh!" Blake rolled her eyes and flailed an arm in exasperation. "Again, it's a _romance_ novel, oaf ridiculous oaf!"

Yang smirked. "Yeah, with a naked lady on the front."

Blake huffed. "It's a woman's _shoulder_, from behind. It's not a-"

"Yeah, a woman's _nekked_ shoulder."

"I hate you."

Yang grinned.

"What's a porno?" Ruby asked.

Yang blanched. "Oh shit." Blake put her face in her hands.

"What?! What is it?!"

"Nothing, something dumb," Yang answered, trying to play things cool and utterly failing. "Don't worry about it."

Ruby pouted. "Fine. I'll just floogle it then." She pulled out her scroll.

"NO!" Weiss, Blake, and Yang all cried at the same time.

Ruby went still, eyes wide.

Weiss reached over and placed her hand over Ruby's scroll and pushed it down into her lap, giving her a slow shake of her head.

Blake cleared her throat. "It's just, uh… You know about sex, right?" she asked Ruby, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation.

Ruby gasped. "When people kiss really hard and make a baby?"

Weiss smacked her forehead, her cheeks probably infrared with how embarrassed she was with this conversation. Yang slumped low into her chair and groaned.

Blake blinked and turned to her partner. "She's _fifteen_! How-has your dad really not had the Talk with her about this?!"

"He didn't n-I-no, he hasn't. He had 'the Talk'-" Yang made air quotes with her fingers "-with me when I was fourteen 'cause I needed it-"

"Oh really?" Blake cut in, an eyebrow raised precariously as she crossed her arms.

Yang's cheeks somehow went even redder than they already were. "I-I mean-I just meant, like, there were… some guys and girls at school… I was pretty popul-" she cut herself off and shook her head. "_Anyway!_ He had the Talk with me, and it was awful and awkward. And he said he dreaded the day he'd need to have the Talk with Ruby, and I said I'd do it for him when it was time, and he was all like 'ermahgersh, yes please thank you thank you!' She just…" Yang shrugged. "She hasn't needed it yet."

"What 'Talk'?" Ruby asked, making her own air quotes.

Yang's eyes went wide and she looked back and forth between Weiss and Blake. Weiss was torn: on one hand, it seemed like Yang was treating her like part of the team again, at least insofar as the awkwardness of this conversation made her forget she was mad, which was really nice, but on the other hand… Weiss _really_ didn't want to be part of this conversation.

Blake was just smirking at Yang, eyebrows raised expectantly.

"So... " Yang started nervously, looking _anywhere_ but Ruby. "Sooooo, Ruby, you know how there are, like birds and bees and stuff?"

Blake snorted, hard, and it devolved into a full fit of giggles. Weiss couldn't help but smile and cringe.

Ruby looked at everyone, confused. "Uh… yeah?"

Yang nodded slowly to herself, like she was trying to psych herself up to keep talking. "Well, maybe just birds," she muttered to herself.

"Uh, pretty sure bees are a thing, Yang," Ruby said.

Yang waved a hand. "N-not for the metaphor… maybe. You _do_ still think boys are gross, right?" She looked hopeful at that.

"Uh, _yeah_," Ruby said, like it was obvious. "Gross _and_ yucky."

Yang nodded slowly some more, muttering to herself again. "Right. 'Gross _and_ yucky'. Good. Goodgoodgood."

"Uh," Ruby interjected.

"Ahem! So… ahem. So, like, someday, hopefully far, _far_ in the future, when I'm, like, fucking _dead_-"

"Yang, no!" Ruby cried. "Don't die!"

Yang waved her off. "So you may, somedaybutmaybenever, see a pretty girl, or maybe a handsome boy-" Ruby wrinkled her nose "-yeah, 'kay. You may see a pretty girl and, uh, feel, like… urges."

Ruby raised an eyebrow. "To kiss them really hard?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

"Like, on the lips?" Ruby asked.

"No. Well, yeah, but-"

"Pretty sure there are lips involved either way," Blake quipped, grinning widely at Yang.

Yang went white. Weiss' complexion white.

Weiss set her elbows on the table-something she _never_ did because that was uncouth-and buried her face in the crooks of her arm, wrapping her hands around the top of her head and trying to wish this discussion away.

"Uh," Ruby repeated.

"S-so!" Yang stammered. "So… yeah. You may feel urges to, uh, kiss said pretty girl in, uh… all sorts of places, and, uh… Well just remember that when you got those urges, you should, uh… completely ignore them because thinking about you doing that shit is grossing me the fuck out!"

Ruby blinked widely while Blake cackled. "What's gross about kissing? You kissed people at Signal all the time!"

Yang went red again, her eyes flicking nervous at Blake for only a millisecond. Blake's eyebrow was raised again, bursts of tiny giggles shaking her shoulders.

"Not _all _the time…" Yang said.

"Yuh-huh!" Ruby argued. She started counting names on her fingers. "There was Clay and Ecru and Ginger and Russell and Maya an-"

"Alright! Shut up!" Yang was so red it would probably leave some sort of burn scar.

Ruby blinked.

"Well this is good to know," Blake snidely remarked, eyeing Yang coyly.

Yang coughed. "Look, I jus-I, uh… Wait! You saw me with Maya?!"

Ruby fiddled with her napkin. "_Saw_, no. But I got home from detention early and heard you two kissing all noisy and stuff when I was watching cartoons." Yang went from red back to stark white in an instant. "I think she left through your window, though, 'cause she didn't leave through the front door and you were alone when you came out of your room."

Now Yang's face fell into her hands. "Oh sweet Light," she whispered.

"Well I'm, like, really confused now," Ruby said, "and you still haven't answered my question."

Yang looked up fearfully. "What question?"

"What's a porno?"

"I gotta go, uh, powder my nose or some shit," Yang declared. She moved to push her chair back from the table, but it jerked and stopped. She looked down at something between herself and Blake that Weiss couldn't see because the table blocked her view. She leaned over.

Blake had hooked her foot around one of the chair legs to keep Yang from leaving. She had an impish grin on.

"You spent _two hours_ today telling me all about how you'd helped raise your sister and how you're 'basically already a parent," she said, air quoting the last bit. "So…-" she jerked her head towards Ruby "-_parent_." She grinned mischievously.

"Yang's not my parent! She's too ridiculous!"

"I _will_ come over there and noogie you."

"See?" Ruby gestured at Yang with an upturned palm. "What kinda parent threatens their innocent child with noogies?!"

"Innocent?" Yang asked dubiously.

"Isn't this entire conversation stemming from the basis of Ruby's innocence?" Weiss asked, hoping the tiny bit of humor would be eno-

Blake shot her a chilling glare.

Weiss swallowed. She was starting to get mad. She glared back until Blake looked away.

Yang seemed to have forgotten to be mad at Weiss, though, because she huffed and slumped in her seat. "I guesssss."

Ruby sighed. "I'm so confu-Weiss, do _you_ know what they're talking about?"

"Yes," she replied automatically, still trying to wrestle through her stewing anger at being treated this way when she'd done nothing wrong.

"... Well can you explain it to me?"

"Mm."

"... Weiss?"

"Huh, what?" Weiss finally pulled her attention back to her partner.

Ruby blinked at her. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

"Oh." She glanced over at Yang, who was still slumped down at looking between Weiss and Ruby apprehensively. "Well-"

"Here is your water," the waitress announced, placing a clear glass in front of Weiss. Weiss silently thanked the Light for the interruption. "And your…" Amethyst leaned into Ruby and whispered, "_orange soda_."

Ruby breathed in an exaggerated gasp. "Thanks!" She unwrapped her straw, stuck it in her cup, and then inhaled a huge gulp of soda.

"Aaagh!" she squealed, squeezing her eyes shut. "So fizzy!"

Amethyst raised an eyebrow at her, then set a plate of podded soybeans in the middle of the table. "And your edamame," she declared. "You guys decide what you want to eat for your entrees?"

'_Oh, right.'_ With the terribly awkward conversation going on, Weiss had completely forgotten to look at the menu.

"Not yet," she answered.

Ruby shook her head quickly and opened up her own menu, taking another huge gulp of soda and letting out a loud "aaaaah!"

'_Dolt.'_

"I'd like the dinner plate three," Blake told the waitress.

"Mkay. Did you want to Vacuo rolls spicy or mild?"

"Mmm," Blake hummed, deliberating. She glanced at Yang, who raised an eyebrow at her. "Ah, what the heck. Spicy." She handed her menu to Amethyst.

"Mmmkay. And you?"

Yang also handed her menu over. "Dragon's rage rice bowl, please."

"Chicken or beef?"

"Beef. And that's spicy, right?"

Amethyst's eyes flashed wide a bit. "_Very_."

"Nice," Yang said with a nod.

"Need me to come back?" the waitress asked Weiss.

Weiss glanced at the menu one last time. "No. Dinner plate five, please."

Amethyst nodded and jotted down the order, then turned to Ruby.

Ruby was scanning down the menu, lips moving slightly as she read the words. "I'll get the one Blake got!" she finally proclaimed.

The waitress looked at the other three girls, not sure which one was Blake.

"Dinner plate three," Blake clarified.

"Ah. Thank you. Spicy or mild Vacuo rolls?"

"Mild!"

Amethyst made a mark and snapped her notebook closed. "Alright! I'll have your dinner out shortly."

The three older girls all waited, breath held, to see where Ruby would pick up the conversation.

"Have you guys ever wondered how weird it is that orange soda can somehow taste exactly like oranges _and_ not anything like oranges at the same time?" Ruby asked, taking another big gulp. "Oh, by the way, Blake!" she blurted, not even waiting for a response. "If you're looking for a bookstore, we passed by one while we were shopping. 'Tukson's Book Trade.' It said it was 'home to every book under the sun' on the window."

"That sounds promising," Blake sighed, clearly relieved Ruby got distracted.

"What if there's a book that was written, like, underground?" Yang asked.

Ruby gasped. "Like a _drow_ book?"

Yang blinked at her. "Yes, Ruby. Like a drow book."

"A what book?" Weiss asked, no longer following.

With a little smile, Ruby explained, "Drow are elves that live in the Underdark, silly."

"The what?"

"Ermahgersh, Weiss! Have you never played Dungeons and Duststorms?!"

Weiss frowned. "That dice game?"

The wide-eyed stare Ruby gave her made Weiss wonder if she'd suddenly sprouted a second head. "It's a _tabletop role-playing game_, Weiss!" Ruby corrected. "You get together with your friends and one of you is the dungeon master that decides what happens and everybody else plays awesome fantasy characters they made and you beat bad guys and slay monsters and find treasure and stuff! How have you never played it?!"

Weiss recoiled slightly. "I don't have ffffff…." She trailed off as she realized what she'd been about to say.

Ruby realized it too. She scooted her chair over-noisily-and gave Weiss' arm a hug. "Well you have _at least_ three friends you can play it with now."

Weiss chanced a glance at Blake, who was staring blankly at her across the table, somehow still managing to look hostile.

Two friends at most.

She glanced at Yang, who had her eyes narrowed warily, darting back and forth between Weiss and Blake.

Maybe only one friend.

She nodded instead of voicing her doubts. "Thanks, Ruby. But we're already monster slayers in real life. Why would I need to play a game for that?"

"Whooooa, that's truuue!" Ruby gasped. She looked around at the girls at the table. "Yang is like our fighter-"

"Barbarian," Yang corrected.

"Oh, yeah!" She giggled. "I would like to rage," she said in a low(er) voice, trying to sound strong and masculine or something, but it mostly just sounded squeaky and cute. She continued in a normal voice, "And Blake is our rogue!"

Blake shrugged. "Sure." She started eating some of her appetizer.

"And Weiss is our sorcerer!"

"Eh," Yang grunted.

"Wizard?" Ruby tried again.

Yang nodded.

Weiss wasn't sure what she was supposed to say to that.

"And I'd be… I'd be… uh."

"Ranger?" Yang suggested, grabbing a soybean pod and popping part of it into her mouth, pressing out one of the beans inside with her teeth.

"Ya think?"

Yang shrugged. "You're a super sniper."

"But I also slash things really good!"

"Well," Weiss corrected instinctively.

"But I also slash things really well!" Ruby tried again, reaching out for an edamame of her own.

"I mean, rangers aren't _terrible_ in melee combat," Yang argued. "And, like, realm walker rangers can teleport between attacks. It would be like you using your semblance."

"Truuuuue, that's awesome! Team RWBY, adventuring party extraordinaires!"

She grabbed another beanpod, and Weiss reached out to do the same.

"Ahem."

Weiss froze, hand over the plate, and looked up to find Blake glaring at her again.

"What? I'm not allowed to eat food I'm paying for?" Weiss demanded, feeling her temper start to crack.

"Who said you're paying for this? Yang and I are splitting it."

Weiss frowned. "But… but this dinner is my treat for the team. That's what I-"

"I don't want any _treats_ from you," Blake sneered.

"Hey! Blaaaake!" Ruby half yelled, half whined.

Temper flared. "Fine," Weiss shot back. "You-ha-"

'_Fuck.' _

She couldn't form a sentence again. Why did this _always_ happen when she got emotional?

"Pay for yourself from now on then," she finally growled.

Blake rolled her eyes, almost vicious with the motion. "I've been taking care of myself all my life, _Schnee_." Weiss balled her fists. "I don't need and never asked for your money." She smirked. "Must be weird for you."

Weiss moved to leave when Ruby's tiny hand clamped around her wrist and pulled her back down into her seat.

"Hey! That's enough!" Ruby said loudly. "Weiss, no running away. Blake, stop being a butt! What the frickity frack is going on?!"

"I'm not the butt here," Blake responded, glaring eyes not leaving Weiss'.

"Weiss isn't being a butt!" Ruby protested. "Weiss is awesome and super nice and both of you need to calm down!"

Weiss was still struggling to find words, and wasn't able to get a word in before Blake kept up her vicious verbal onslaught.

"She's only being nice to you because you're not a faunus, Ruby. I guarantee you if you had cat ears or a fox tail or chameleon skin or anything like that, she'd be absolutely horrible to you."

"I-but-" Ruby glanced at Weiss, expression torn. "But that doesn't make any sense," she protested quietly.

"No, it doesn't," Blake agreed.

"Ruby," Yang said firmly. When her sister looked over, she slowly shook her head.

Weiss' heart fell.

"Nooo," Ruby whined. "Come on, Yang, not you too. We're all supposed to be a team! Not fighting over… whatever this is."

"_This_ is simple, Ruby," Blake said flatly. "Weiss is a racist."

"I'm _not_ a racist."

"No?"

"I'm just _educated_."

Blake scoffed.

"Guys, _stop_!" Ruby cut in. She let go of Weiss' wrist and scooted her chair back to the midpoint between Weiss and Blake. "Weiss, not all faunus are bad. I've met a lot of awesome, nice ones. Blake, stop insulting Weiss and just talk! She just hasn't gotten to know any nice faunus before! Don't hate her, _help_ her!"

A tense silence fell over the table. Weiss and Blake both kept glaring at each other, but then Blake frowned and looked away.

Did Weiss win? Was she _trying_ to win? Was this a fight that had a winner and loser?

She glanced at Yang, who was regarding Ruby, eyebrows raised, either surprised or impressed or both. Ruby looked back at her, worried and unsure.

'_Was that okay?'_ she mouthed to her older sister.

Yang shrugged. "How 'bout we put this drama on hold for a bit and enjoy our dinner together, yeah?" she suggested. "I told Blake I'd take her clubbing tonight and I don't want to go dancing with someone that's in a pissy mood."

Blake glowered at her partner, but Yang just shrugged innocently.

"Fine," Blake huffed.

"Fine," Weiss agreed.

"Woohoo!" Ruby chirped. "We're all friends again!"

Weiss and Blake continued to glare at each other.


	19. Thaw 2-4

"Ruby, don't put the ginger _on_ the sushi, you dunce!"

Ruby froze.

"It's bad enough you're using your fingers instead of the chopsticks. At least eat the food correctly!"

"Okay, _look_," she huffed, picking up one of the useless food sticks and pointing it at Weiss' nose. "These things are dumb and stupid. They're just sticks! Why would I go through the effort of, like, tweezering my food? What is the point of a utensil if it makes you do _more_ work than you would have to do if you just used your hands?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes grumpily.

"And _second,_" Ruby continued, "... wh-what do you mean? How am I eating it wrong? Isn't this ginger stuff for putting on the snushies?"

'Snushi' was, of course, patented Ruby-slang for snuggly sushi, cuz they looked like they were all snuggly wrapped up in blankets. Seaweed blankets, sure, which wasn't totally ideal, but still.

"The ginger's not a garnish, it's a palate cleanser," Weiss 'explained'.

"... A what?"

Weiss gave a half smile and sighed. "Okay, so the wasabi is a garnish, right? You add it to the sushi to give it flavor."

Ruby wrinkled her nose. Wasabi-this weird looking green goop, was spicy as HEEEECK.

Weiss grinned. "Yeah, same." She gestured at the ginger. "Anyway, after you eat a piece of sushi, you're supposed to munch on a piece of ginger to cleanse your p… to get the taste out of your mouth."

"But it tastes good!" Ruby protested.

Weiss nodded. "Yes. But if you clear the lingering tastes in your mouth, then you get to fully taste the next piece of sushi rather than have the flavors overlap and mitigated."

"Oh. Huh. Cool! That sounds like science!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow out her amusedly.

"The best kind of science," Yang said. "_Food_ science."

Ruby nodded. "You know, I had a friend at Signal that claimed to be a vegetarian, but they ate shrimp because they thought it was a vegetable."

"_What?"_ Weiss and Blake both exclaimed at the same time. They then shot each other brief glares, but looked away, and Ruby chose to ignore it.

Yang just chuckled. She'd already heard this story.

"Why-wha-_how_?" Blake stammered out.

Ruby grinned. "Because she heard they were grown in shrimp farms!"

Weiss and Blake blinked at her.

"I should mention she was pretty dumb."

"Obviously," Weiss muttered.

Ruby popped one of her snushies in her mouth. "Mmm! So goooood!"

"Alright, I can't take this. Come here." Weiss motioned to her to scoot her chair over.

"Wha?"

"I'm going to teach you how to use chopsticks so you don't look like a barbaric heathen. Come here."

"She doesn't look barbaric, look at her!" Yang argued. "She looks like she belongs on a teen fashion magazine!"

Ruby smiled widely at the compliment. She _did_ look pretty good. Weiss knew her way around clothes, that was for sure.

"Yes, she looks great," Weiss agreed. "Which is why her eating sushi in a four star restaurant with her _fingers_ is totally unacceptable."

"They didn't give me a fork!" Usually there was a fork and a knife wrapped in a napkin set at the table, but the napkin at this restaurant was wrapped around a fancy, deep-dish looking soup spoon and a pair of chopsticks. No fork! No knife! No sense!

"You don't need one. Come _here_!" Weiss was getting pretty flabbergasted.

Decorum was important to Weiss, Ruby knew. She scooted over to subject herself to a teaching moment. She was nervous about what would happen when Weiss taught her and she still got it wrong anyway, but she'd endure this if it meant making Weiss happy, especially with this whole Weiss/Blake grumpfest that was going on. And Ruby didn't mind being closer to Weiss-she smelled nice!

"Okay. Bring your plate over. Okay, so take one of them and pinch it between your thumb and middle finger. Like this." Weiss demonstrated, and Ruby copied her. "Almost. Here."

Weiss reached over and adjusted the way Ruby's fingers were pressing into the thin wooden stick. She had to reach across Ruby 'cause Ruby was a lefty, but that was okay. Weiss' fingers were that comfy-pillow cold, despite the restaurant being pretty warm.

"Like that. Now take this one-" Weiss picked up Ruby's other chopstick and wedged it into the floopy bit of skin between Ruby's thumb and pointer finger knuckles "-and pinch it. With-yeah, like that."

"This feels weird."

Weiss did that half-eye roll. "It'll take some getting used to, but it'll feel natural soon. Now look, when you go to pick something up, just move your index finger up and down." She demonstrated by effortlessly tweezering a piece of sushi and lifting it up in the air.

Ruby tried to do the same.

"No n-don't move your middle finger. You're not trying to move both sticks, just the top one."

Ruby tried again.

"N-here, scoot closer."

Ruby obeyed, and Weiss reached over to get a grip around Ruby's hand. She squeezed down on Ruby's middle finger from two sides again to lock it in place. Her arm was pressing lightly against Ruby's chest and her hand was really soft.

"Okay, try now."

This time, when Ruby's finger muscles instinctively both tried to 'scissor', Weiss' grip held firm on her middle finger and kept it from moving.

"This feels _extra_ weird."

Weiss huffed a laugh. "Do it some more. Get used to the feeling of holding your middle finger in place, then I'll let go and you can do it yourself."

Ruby nodded and followed the motion some more, then slowly moved her hand down to try to pick up a sushi roll, Weiss following the movement.

! She got i-

Aw, she slipped.

She tried again, and this time she got it! Her pointer finger felt a little wobbly, and she got the feeling she'd drop the sushi soon, so she quickly brought it up to her mouth and chomped on it.

Delicious.

"O-ow! Sto-ugh!" Weiss pulled her hand away, and Ruby realized she'd twisted Weiss' wrist around on accident. "Dolt."

" 'm shrrry!"

"It's fine. Don't talk with food in your mouth."

Yang let out a little choking life, her face full of beef. She covered her mouth with a hand. "You're such a mom."

"I am not!" Weiss shot back.

"Are to!"

"Am not!"

Are to!"

"Am-ugh! Stop being a child!"

"Yeah, that really sounded non-momish," Yang grinned.

"I…" Weiss huffed and turned back to Ruby. "Try again on your own. Focus on keeping your middle finger still. Have some ginger."

Ruby nodded and set to work trying to chopstick a bit of the weird looking pink veggie slice. It was harder without Weiss' help, but she knew how the movement was supposed to feel. She did her best, but her fingers hurrrrrt! And they kept shaking!

"Relax, Ruby. You're tensing up your fingers too much. And you don't need to press so hard on the chopsticks. Just… relax."

'Relax' was always such easy advice to give, but never easy to actually do. She didn't complain, though. Weiss was teaching her something, and actually being very nice about it! Ruby preferred more high fives and 'good jobs' when she was learning knew stuff, but Weiss not yelling at her was _basically_ like her saying good job, right?

She tried to relax a bit, then went at it again.

"Stop."

"Whaaaat?"

Oops. That came out way whinier than she meant it to.

Weiss pointed at her hand. "_Relax. _Give me your hand." She made a 'come here' gesture and held her left hand out, palm up.

Ruby placed her hand in Weiss', still holding on to the chopsticks.

"Look," Weiss said, using her empty hand to give Ruby's outermost knuckle on her index finger a gentle squeeze. "You're so rigid! Loosen up. It'll be easier to move your finger up and down if you're not trying to strangle the chopstick."

She smiled lightly, somewhat hopefully, and Ruby realized she was trying to be funny!

Ruby gave her a big grin in return.

"Stop smiling like a doofus and relax your finger," Weiss commanded, though the pleased twerk on her lips showed she wasn't grumpy.

Happy her partner was happy, Ruby focused on untensing her finger. Weiss kept a light pressure on it until she was able to press the knuckle in and out.

"Good. Now try."

She said 'good'!

It _was_ a lot easier this time. It felt a bit strange to just pop some ginger in her mouth, but she did. It was freakishly… juicy? _Slimy?_ Is there a word for it? And it was both spicy and sweet at the same time. It was tasty! And a very strong flavor. Like, any bit of the sushi taste was completely gone now.

Food science!

Weiss gave her an approving nod.

Woohoo!

Ruby happily continued eating, now as a refined, chopstick person. Unfortunately, it was a lot slower.

"Do you think shrimp are all, like, have things they want to be when they grow up? Like, some of them are like 'when I grow up I wanna be in a sushi roll' or 'when I grow up I want to be in a shrimp cocktail' or something?"

"That's quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've heard you say," Weiss informed her.

"By 'when I grow up' do you mean 'when I die'?" Yang asked. "Because…"

"Oh." Ruby looked down at her snushie sadly. "Yeah."

Blake was being awfully quiet.

"What do you think, Blake?"

"Huh? What?" Blake blinked back into the real world from wherever she'd gone staring into her rice. The hand that wasn't holding her chopsticks was curled up, systematically squeezing one knuckle after another like she was trying to pop them but they'd already been popped, and now it was just a tick.

An angry tick. The way her jaw was set, Ruby could tell Blake was still upset.

And Ruby was still sitting right next to Weiss, so when Blake looked up at her, her eyes instinctively flickered to Weiss and narrowed, then quickly darted back to her plate.

"You think shrimp have career choices?" she asked, trying to keep her tone as light and jovial as possible. She scooted her chair back over to her spot, curiously noting that the right side of her body got noticeably warmer when she moved away from Weiss.

Weiss was straight up _radiating_ cold right now. Like how the air around Yang got hot when she was upset.

(But the opposite. 'Cause hot and cold are opposites, duh.)

Did that mean Weiss was upset right now too? Still? She seemed okay. She was being really nice to Ruby. Although that wasn't too unusual now, right?

Weiss was avoiding eye contact with Blake too, though. Crap. Ruby hadn't really fixed anything, just gotten them to stop yelling at each other.

What the frickity frack was she supposed to do, though?

"I imagine they do," Blake answered, stirring Ruby from her worries. "They probably have job fairs where they apply to be sushi shrimp or cocktail shrimp or tempura shrimp and stuff." Her voice was flat as she made the joke, picking at her rice.

Ruby giggled extra hard to try to cheer Blake up. It sorta worked! Blake looked up at her and raised her eyebrows, smiling slightly in amusement.

Hey, that worked!

So Blake was sorta okay, Weiss was sorta okay, and Yang was-

Yang was glaring at Ruby.

'_Da heck?'_

"Yang!"

"Wot?!"

"Why are you glaring at me?"

Yang sighed and shoved more food in her mouth, shaking her head.

"Tell me!"

Yang shook her head again and pointedly chewed.

"I will be as annoying as possible until you tell me!"

"Please no," Weiss said from the side.

Ruby pointed at her partner's stupid pretty nose. "Quiet you. Yang! Tell me!"

Yang groaned and rolled her eyes dramatically, then crossed her arms and slouched, returning to the same mildly-grumpy glare from before.

"It's… I have been trying to teach you for _years_ how to use chopsticks, and every time you just whined at me and accused me of trying to make you eat slower so I could steal your food. Then _Weiss_ shows up here with her bossy mcboss pants and you're happy as fuck to learn!"

Weiss recoiled at that. "I do _not_ have bossy mc… boss pants." She frowned, confused that those words had just come out of her mouth.

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed. "Weiss isn't even _wearing_ pants!"

Weiss jerked her head around and blinked at Ruby. "Right, because I'm wearing a skirt."

"Yeah."

'_Duh.'_

"You should add that on there," Weiss advised. "Just yelling 'she's not wearing pants!' sounds bad."

"Oh. Right."

Yang shrugged. "Hey girl, live your best life."

"What does that even _mean_?" Weiss retorted.

"Look," Yang bulldozed, turning back to Ruby, "all I'm saying is the Yang will remember this."

"_The _Yang_?" _Blake asked.

"She does that sometimes," Ruby explained. "If you haven't noticed, she's a bit of a weirdo."

"Seems to run in the family," Blake muttered.

Yang pointed at Ruby across the table. "That's it, you're getting tickled tonight."

"Nooooooo!"

Weiss reached up and yanked Yang's hand down. "Do neither of you know how to _behave_?"

Yang rolled her eyes a bit and went back to eating.

Dinner as a whole went pretty smoothly. Weiss and Blake didn't say a single word to each other, but Weiss was pleasant to Ruby and Yang, and Blake finally started talking to them too-after much prodding from Ruby to get her to join the conversation, of course.

Yang ordered some sort of alcoholic drink called sake because she could do that now that she was eighteen. Then she shared it with Blake, which Ruby was pretty sure was against the rules, especially since Weiss watched with a disapproving frown the whole time, but neither Blake nor Yang seemed to care.

Half an hour later, they were done with their plates.

"What kinda desserts are there here?" Ruby asked-because of course they needed desert.

"We can ask for a dessert menu," Weiss offered, already raising a hand to flag down a waitress.

Yang took a deep, happy breath and stood, stretching her arms over her head. "Well, you guys enjoy your, like, rice cakes or whatever. I wanna get to the club before the lines get hella long. You ready, Blakey-Blake?"

"Sure. Just need the bill." She kept her eyes on her hands as she said it.

"Let me payyy," Weiss said in a curiously whiney tone that Ruby definitely did _not_ expect to hear from a princess.

Blake ignored her.

"P-please?"

"I already said I don't want your money, Schnee," Blake finally shot at her.

"Stop _calling_ me that!"

Oh boy. It was happening again.

"Are you not a Schnee?"

Weiss eyes flashed angrily. "I am, but when you say it you're just thinking of my father, and I am _not_ my father!"

Blake's expression stayed cold. "You sound like him."

Weiss visibly flinched at that. "I-h… how would you even know?"

"Guys!" Ruby cut in, sad she had to do this again. Was this going to be a regular thing now? "Stop. Weiss, I don't know why but Blake just doesn't like your family's company and where your money comes from, okay? It's not personal."

"It _feels_ personal," Weiss sulked back.

"And Blake, Weiss wants to pay for dinner because she feels like that's the only thing she has to contribute to the team, okay? She's not trying to, like, own you or something."

"Well maybe I don't want to be a part of her team," Blake snarled.

"Hey!" Ruby shouted. "Not cool!"

Weiss' fist balled up angrily and her chin quivered slightly, briefly. "But what did I do to you?" she asked quietly, voice shaky.

Blake glared silently back at her.

"Alright, I'm fucking sick of this drama," Yang said. She walked behind Blake's chair and pulled it out. "We're leaving."

"But-"

"I don't fucking care about the bill." She reached into her back pocket for her wallet, pulling out a couple twenty lien notes and tossing them across the table. "There. I paid for your dinner, not Weiss. Weiss, if you want to just give those to Ruby or back to me later, go for it. But as far as Blake is concerned, I paid for her dinner. Alright?"

Weiss was doing that frozen statue impression she did when she was sad or angry.

"I'll take that as a yes," Yang said. "Come on, Blake, let's go."

Blake stood and huffed. "How am _I _the bad guy here?! She's a ra-"

"I don't care!" Yang shouted, now getting loud enough that heads turned their way. Or maybe people had already been watching them. Ruby hadn't really been paying attention. "This shit is ruining my night and I'm done with it. Walk or I'm going out alone."

Blake numbly obeyed her partner and headed for the front door, shoulders tensed like she still wanted to argue.

Yang came over to Ruby and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. "Sorry, Peanut," she said quietly.

Ruby just nodded, not sure what to say.

"Thank you for dinner, Weiss," Yang said. "Or at least Ruby-Roo's. However you do that. And thanks for taking her shopping. She looks great."

Weiss's lips twitched in a small smile, then she nodded tinily and quickly, almost birdlike.

"You have the receipts?" Yang asked.

"They-ahem." Weiss had to clear her throat, her voice sounding shaky and broken. "They're in the bags back in the room."

Yang nodded. "Thanks. Have a good night, guys." She ruffled Ruby's hair as she walked away.

"You too," Weiss replied.

"Have fun dancing!" Ruby called after her sister.

Now it was just Ruby and Weiss again. And Weiss looked miserable.

Ruby could only let the silence linger for a couple seconds before she had to break it.

"You okay?"

Weiss kept staring blankly at her hands, fingers interlocked and palms resting on the edge of the table, giving no indication she'd heard.

"Weiss?"

"Hm?" Still staring at her hands.

"You okay?"

Finally, Weiss looked up and met her eyes and gave her a depressingly sad smile. "I'm fine."

She definitely _wasn't_ fine.

What was Ruby supposed to do? Call Weiss out on not being fine? Or would that be annoying? Should she just leave it alone? But then nothing would get better, right?

Maybe she should just ask and see what Weiss wanted to do.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked.

Weiss shook her head slowly, eyes falling back to her hands.

"Okay."

"I just don't understand why she's so mad at me," Weiss whispered. Ruby wasn't even sure she'd meant to say it out loud.

"Me neither," Ruby admitted. "Maybe she has someone that means a lot to her that's a faunus?"

"Mm… What? Oh." Weiss stirred, again not realizing Ruby was talking to her. "Yes, that could be it. But…" She trailed off and sighed. Her expression twiched, and she riled up a bit. "And then she goes and calls me '_Schnee'_, like that's supposed to mean something. Like it's supposed to mean something _bad_."

"Yeah. I wanted to ask about that. Did the SDC, like, do something bad to faunus?"

"Other than get attacked day in and day out by the psychopath terrorist organization that claims we're evil subjugators?"

"Um… yeah?"

Weiss sighed and laughed at the same time. "I mean, we used to use faunus slave labor-you know, like _everyone_ did until the end of the Great War."

"They're probably not super happy about that," Ruby offered lamely.

"Sure, but _everyone_ used faunus slave labor. And now we don't, and we treat faunus the same way everyone else in Atlas does, so I don't understand why we're some special exception!"

"Maybe Blake is still mad at your dad for enslaving faunus?"

Weiss shook her head. "My father wasn't in charge back then. It was my grandfather. And he's far nicer than my father is anyway! From what he's told me, he treated the slaves well, far better than others did. I just… it doesn't make sense!"

'_Weiss' dad isn't nice? Well… that's good to know… I guess?"'_

"Is treating slaves well a thing?" she asked instead. She didn't really want to argue with Weiss, but they were trying to figure out Blake's side of this, so Ruby figured she should play Darkness' advocate. "They're still slaves."

"I don't know, Ruby. I wasn't there. This was sixty years ago. I've never had a slave, and yes, I think slavery is wrong, even if it is just a faunus. I'm just saying, everyone had faunus slaves back then, and my grandfather was nicer than other slave owners, so I don't understand why we're getting all this hate!"

Ruby shrugged. She had no idea why either, which meant there had to be some reason they weren't thinking of, but she didn't want to push Weiss. "Wanna drown your woes in some chocolate cake or something?"

Hopefully this place had chocolate cake.

Weiss cocked her head to the side and thought for a moment. "Could we go, actually?"

"Awww."

"We have cookies at the dorm," Weiss reminded her.

"Oh, true!" Special Weiss gift cookies were way better than a random chocolate cake.

"If you-could…" Weiss stumbled over her words. "There's a statue garden nearby I wanted to visit before we head back. Would that be okay?"

Oooh, statue garden? That sounded sweet!

"Sure!"

Weiss smiled at her.

Amy with the awesome blue hair and cute freckles came back. Ruby remembered Weiss had waved at her earlier when they'd been first talking about dessert. Wow, that was, like, _forever_ ago.

"Hi!" Ruby greeted the waitress.

She smiled. "Hello! How can I help, miss?" Amy asked Weiss.

"Could we get the bill?" Weiss asked.

"Of course! Just one?" Weiss nodded. "Okay. I'll be right back." She flashed Ruby a smile as she left.

Dad had always told Ruby she should be extra nice to waiters and waitresses. They had a really sucky job and didn't get paid much, and usually people were mean to them, so even just saying hi and giving them a smile could make their day a lot better. He'd said he knew that from personal experience.

And that was super easy for Ruby to do anyway! She gave smiles to everybody!

The brief bit of quiet that settled after Amy walked away was enough for Weiss to get that sad, faraway look in her eyes that told Ruby she was thinking.

Well that's enough! No thinking allowed here! Or… at least no thinking about sad crap!

It was Distraction Time.

"What kind of shrimp do you think you'd be?" Ruby asked, her thoughts going to the most recent random conversation she'd made.

"What?"

"If you were shrimp, what kind would you be? Snushie shrimp? Cocktail shrimp? Uh… Lo mein shrimp?... Sweet and sour shrimp?" Weiss was just staring blankly at her, so she felt an impulsive need to keep talking. "Ummm… Shrimpy shrimp?"

"Why would I _want _to be a shrimp?"

"Ugh! This is a hypothetical, Weiss! It's not about whether or not you _want_ to be a shrimp, it's about what kind you would be if you had to be one!"

The dark look that crossed over Weiss' eyes made Ruby second guess herself. Why was this such a big d… oh.

Weiss didn't like faunus, who were animal people. A "if you were an animal, what kind would you be" hypothetical probably wasn't sitting well considering the big team turmoil going on right now.

'_... Woops.'_

The dark look faded before Ruby could figure out how to backpedal, though, and Weiss sighed. "I suppose a tempura shrimp," she said, sounding kinda reluctant to be entertaining what was probably a weird conversation to her.

"Oh. I thought you'd say sushi shrimp."

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "That would probably be the most popular answer to that question."

"True. Sushi's pretty awesome. So you want to be edgy and different?" Ruby teased.

Weiss tilted her head. "I suppose. It's more that tempura shrimp is delicious without needing anything else."

Oh. "That's deep, yo."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "So did you enjoy your dinner?"

"I did!" Ruby knew Weiss was talking about just the food and not the overall dinner, so she didn't mention that she really hated how Weiss and Blake were fighting. "It was delicious, and I learned how to use chopsticks!"

Weiss had been right. It _did_ get easier with lots of repetition.

Weiss smiled, a _real_ smile, even though it was small. "I'm glad."

Ruby scooted her chair back over to Weiss and gave her partner a grateful hug around her arm. Weiss sighed lightly and patted Ruby's hand that was wrapped around her bicep.

"This is just a thing with you, isn't it?" Weiss grumbled.

"What, hugs?"

"Yes."

"Of course!" Ruby let go of Weiss and straightened up. "You're awesome, and therefore deserve hugs!"

Weiss pursed her lips to the side, considering. "Well… thank you. You don't have to hug me so much though."

"But then how will you know I think you're awesome?"

"You could just… say it? Like you just did?"

"Pfft! Anybody can just _say_ anything. People say things they don't really mean all the time. But hugs? You can't not mean a hug."

"Eh."

Ruby's eyes went wide. "What?! Liar hugs are not a thing!"

"I'm sure they're not for you," Weiss replied sadly. "Though I can't see you lying with words either."

"Well, good!" Ruby smiled back. "My parents taught me that lying was bad and wrong and bad."

"And wrong?" Weiss grinned.

"Mm-hmm!"

Amy came back and got halfway through handing Weiss the little notebook thing with their receipt when Weiss just handed the lady her card.

"Thank you," Weiss said in a tone that really sounded like 'Just take my card'.

"I-oh. Okay, thank you. Be right back." Amy bustled off again.

"You paying for the whole meal?" Ruby asked, diplomatically avoiding saying Blake's name.

Weiss tilted her head in her strange version of a shrug, then handed the two twenties Yang had given her to Ruby.

"Thanks," Ruby said instinctively. Then she actually considered what it meant. "Are you sure?"

Weiss frowned. "No reason to make you and Yang pay for… _our _fight. If she'd left her own money I would have used it, but not yours."

Yeah. Weiss wasn't saying Blake's name either.

This was bad.

"Okay," Ruby responded quietly. She wasn't really certain she understood the logic behind that, but she knew Weiss wanted to buy her team stuff and didn't want to make a big deal out of it, so Ruby let it go.

"What about you, though?" Weiss asked her.

"What about me, what?"

Weiss pressed her lips together. "What kind of shrimp would you be?"

"Oh!"

Weiss was not only going along with Ruby's silly conversation, but actively continuing it! That was… so awesome!

"Snushie shrimp! Because I'd want to be a snuggly in a blanket!"

Weiss blinked. "The seaweed?"

"Yup!"

"Oh, is _that_ why you're saying 'snushie' like an idiot? Is it a snuggly sushi?"

Ruby giggled happily. "Yup!"

Amy came back then, handing Weiss the notebook with her card sticking out the top. "Thank you guys for coming!" she said. "I hope you enjoyed your dinner?"

"It was great!" Ruby chirped.

Weiss nodded in agreement as she signed the receipt. "It was lovely. I'm sure we'll be back."

"That's great to hear! We look forward to it. Have a good night, ladies." She gave Ruby a tiny wave as she walked away.

"You too!" Ruby smiled back.

She leaned over to look over Weiss' shoulder 'cause she wanted to see what Weiss' signature looked li-

Yep. Swirly and princessy and awesome.

"Woah, a fifteen dollar tip?" she blurted out when she noticed the number stenciled in Weiss' small, neat handwriting. "That's a l-is that a lot?"

It probably wasn't a lot to Weiss. Weiss could probably buy this whole restaurant as an afterthought.

Maybe she should…

"It's fine," Weiss said absently. "She was nice, and you seemed to like her."

"Her hair is sweet!"

Weiss smiled. "You ready to go?"

"Sure!"

They walked out together, Ruby giving a goodbye wave to Fancy Tuxedo Host Dude as they passed him. It was seven thirty now, the evening sun no longer visible behind the city's skyline, rays of orange spiking up from the horizon and painting the sky in pretty pinks and deep purples.

It was lovely.

Weiss stopped to take in the view for a little bit, and Ruby watched her curiously. Weiss clearly seemed to really like pretty things, from cityscapes to fountains to jewelry to horizons. And she always looked at them really closely, taking in everything, like she wanted to commit the images to memory perfectly. Maybe she was thinking about how she would paint them! That would be really neat! Was a painting scrapbook a thing? She could make paintings of all the pretty things she and Ruby saw together while they were at Beacon.

Weiss noticed Ruby watching her and turned, her strikingly blue eyes meeting Ruby's. It was so cool how her eyes were brighter than the sky right now, and th-

"What?"

"Huh?" Ruby blinked and shook herself, all of a sudden very self conscious of how she'd just zoned out while staring at her partner like a big dumb derp.

"You're just staring at me," Weiss stated flatly.

Ruby blushed. "Sorry! Just… just thinking?"

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "What about?"

'_That I'm trying to figure out how you think and what you like so I can be a good friend and team leader and I really like spending time with you and I'm really glad you're my partner.'_

"Uh… shrimp?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Come on," she ordered, leading Ruby down the street.

The sidewalks were pretty full, lots of people out enjoying the weekend and nice weather. Ruby spotted quite a few people dressed like they were going to the club like Yang and Blake. There were also families just out for a walk, couples taking strolls.

It was nice.

Weiss didn't seem to like the crowd, though. She was tense, shoulders pulled in, and anytime someone walked close by her she step away to avoid contact, way overcompensating and often bumping into Ruby.

She didn't seem to mind that too much though.

"You alright?" Ruby asked, concerned.

Weiss nodded tightly. "Not a huge fan of crowds."

Hmm… "You could use your glyphs! Make some stairflakes to get us over everyone else and then you can make us our own personal sidewalk up in the air!"

Weiss laughed out loud at that. "Tempting," she said. "I'd rather not attract attention, though. We're just… out for a nice walk in the city. Like normal people. I can get over my senseless discomfort."

"Senseless? It's-you know, it's okay for you to not like crowds, Weiss. It's perfectly normal."

"I know," she sighed. "But it's not rational. I should be used to them. I've sung at concerts and attended my father's business conferences-"

"And the Red Carpet Gala!" Ruby added excitedly.

Weiss frowned, though. "Yes, and that. So I should be used to them. But I'm not. Which is just… stupid." Her voice grated with frustration at the last word.

"It's okay, Weiss!" Ruby hurried to placate her partner. "People aren't always perfectly logical. Th-"

"But I'm supposed to be better."

Oof.

"You're already better than pretty much everybody, Weiss. At least everyone I know." Ruby looked over at her partner then, trying to gauge Weiss' emotions from her tiny little microexpressions.

Nothing. Blank mask. She mumbled something Ruby couldn't make out.

"What was that?"

Weiss took a deep breath. "It's not enough. Can-can we-"

"Yes! Sorry." Topic change time. "So where's this statue garden thing?"

"Around the next corner, if I recall correctly," Weiss answered after letting out a breath of relief.

"Do you ever recall anything _in_correctly?" Ruby asked with a smile. Weiss may have a lot of self doubt issues, but she _did_ know she was super smart, and she seemed to always appreciate compliments about that.

It worked. She smiled and side-eyed Ruby. "Not that I remember," she joked.

"Ha! Well played, Weissy-Weiss."

"Ugh, no."

Ruby giggled. _She _thought it was a cute name. Although maybe she was biased 'cause she liked Ruby-Roo so much. Or maybe it was just 'cause Yang had come up with it, so it was automatically great.

It only took them a couple minutes to reach the statue garden. It was a little park, rimmed and riddled with tall hedges that were functionally big green walls that turned the place into a maze. The entrance was a doorway-with-no-door that was made by an archway of leafy greens formed by the streetside wall. A small marble pyramid just a few feet into the labyrinth was visible from the sidewalk, and it had words carved into it.

'VALE CITY STATUE GARDENS'

"Whoooa," Ruby breathed.

"Whoa," Weiss agreed with a nod. She waved a hand toward the entrance in a very princessy way. "Shall we?"

Ruby skipped ahead.

'Small' pyramid was a bad description. The top of it still poked up a few inches above Ruby's head. It was completely smooth, white marble, except around the base. The base had a carved relief all around it, images of people-faunus and not-faunus-all in poses and with objects and equipment that looked like they were building the pyramid. Pickaxes, shovels, hammers, and other things that made it look like they were hard at work. And all of it was super detailed and fine.

"Left or right?" Weiss asked her.

"I get to choose?" Ruby asked back even as she inspected both ways try to see which way was better.

"Sure. They look the same, so I have no idea how to decide."

It was true. Both directions were narrow pathways, just wide enough that Ruby and Weiss could stand next to each other and not get clipped by branches and leaves, that extended out a little ways and then turned around corners. No sidewalk, just well kept, slightly trampled grass.

"Left is right?" she suggested.

Weiss nodded in acceptance.

They went left, rounding the corner and-

"Whoooa!"

Up against the hedge wall were two statues, both pure white marble like the pyramid had been. A beowulf pouncing on a growling regular wolf. The red Grimm streaks were painted on the beowulf's face, and the armor plating that was white in real life was painted black, making the sculpture a weird inverse from reality. The wolf, on the other hand, was all white, and also much smaller than the eight foot tall beowulf.

They were clearly fighting, the beowulf in mid leap with a claw swiping out to bonk the wolf in the nose, the wolf tensed, hackles up and legs coiled like it was about to jump up and tackle the beowulf out of the air. From the size difference, he'd probably lose.

"Run, doggo!" Ruby whispered.

"Are you talking to a statue?" Weiss asked, the resigned look on her face indicating she already knew the answer.

Ruby stuck her tongue out at her.

Weiss rolled her eyes and turned back to the statues. "These are impressive," she remarked.

"Heck yeah! Look at the fur!"

The things were so detailed it was crazy. Whoever made them must be insanely talented or using some crazy stone-shaping semblance, because this was nuts.

They followed along the path, which diverged and looped and had dead ends often. There seemed to be themes running along different tracks-one kept up the "Grimm vs nature" theme, with Grimm fighting their natural counterparts: King Taijitu versus a giant cobra, Ursa versus a bear, Weaver versus a giant spider.

Yuck, spiders.

Weiss agreed, wrinkling her nose and moving them along quickly when they reached that one.

The next one, though…

Weiss whistled in appreciation.

Wyvern versus a dragon. They were both freaking _huge_, over twelve feet tall at least. The Wyvern was flapping its wings in the face of the dragon, and the dragon was striking out to bite at the Wyvern's neck.

"Weiss, if I hopped on the dragon's back, could you snap a picture real quick?"

Weiss crossed her arms. "That's a _drake_, and no, because you can't sit on a public art piece!"

Ruby pouted. "But I want to be a dragon rider!"

"Drake."

"What's the difference?"

"Dragons went extinct centuries ago and had four legs. Drakes have two and claws on their wing and are still around, but endangered."

"Oh. Boo."

"Mm," Weiss agreed. "There's a dragon fossil in the Natural History Museum in Mantle. It's… incredible."

Ruby gasped. "How big is it?!"

Cocking her head to the side and squinting in thought, Weiss considered. "Well, both of these statues together could have fit easily in its mouth."

"Whoooooa."

"Mmhm. It's… words would not suffice to describe it."

Ruby looked at the drake statue in front of them. "So are drakes just way smaller than dragons were?"

Weiss shook her head. "I'm pretty sure they are a lot bigger than this. Never really studied them though. I know bits and pieces."

"Whaaaat? There's something you don't know?"

Weiss tried to frown disapprovingly, but she couldn't get rid of the pleased little upturn at the right corner of her mouth. "There's plenty I don't know," she replied.

"Mm… Soooo, was that a no on the picture of me on the drake statue?"

"Ruby!"

"Ugh, fiiiine. Come on." Ruby stomped off down the pathway.

They ended up making a turn that had them following a different theme, one of the kingdoms interacting with each other. Splashes of color indicated which kingdom the statues of faceless people were meant to represent-yellow for Vale, blue for Atlas, green for Mistral, orange for Vacuo. The first statues showed them walking away from each other. Colonizing and settling. Then handing each other things. Trading. Then fighting, swords and shields painted in the kingdoms' colors. The Great War.

Then there was a path Ruby very much wished they'd avoided. The faunus. It showed them in chains at first. There was one piece that was a line of four faunus of different types all on their knees, facing the wall, their backs scarred and a human with a whip in hand standing against the opposite hedge.

Weiss was silent (and Ruby didn't dare risk saying something out of fear of upsetting her), but her creased ever so slightly at the scene.

Then there was one of four faunus breaking free of their chains, each one with a splash of color to represent the kingdoms. The Rebellion. The faunus had taken the opportunity of the Great War to fight for their freedom. The first revolt had been in Atlas, and it was a large part of why Atlas and Vacuo had lost the Great War. Production of the Atlas war machines had stopped and they'd had to divert troops back home. Ruby couldn't remember all the specifics of what had happened after, but she knew the Vytal Treaty that ended the Great War also ended faunus slavery.

Ruby Rose presents History Facts!

After that was a statue of a big… cat faunus? He was tall and jacked, with a big tuft of chest hair poking out of his shirt and fingernails that curled out to long claws. Around his feet were a bunch of tiny faunus, all standing around looking happy and determined. In one hand he held up a flag that had a wolf head painted on it.

"They got the symbol wrong," Weiss said, breaking the silence.

"Huh?"

She pointed up at the flag. "The White Fang logo. They're missing the claw marks that go across it."

"Oh."

"And it should be blood red, not black. I'm pretty sure this is Ghira the Speaker, the guy that started everyone's favorite terrorist organization."

Ruby stayed quiet, not sure what was okay to say. She walked to the next statue, the final one on this path before it branched away.

It was a work in progress.

"Wow, they really do carve these!" Ruby remarked as she walked up to the incomplete statue. It was similar to the last one, with tiny faunus around the base of a taller figure, but these tiny faunus looked angry and most of them had weapons. The big figure was what was still unfinished, only the legs and some of the body and arms done. From how thin the legs and arms were it was clearly a woman, and there was a pattern of tiger stripes painted on her skin in orange. She was also holding up what looked like would end up being a flag, once it was complete, but her other hand as set next to her hip in a way that suggested she would have a weapon there.

"What did you _think_ they did?" Weiss wondered.

"I dunno. I thought maybe there was someone with a stone shaping semblance, 'cause I didn't think someone could be this detailed and perfect with a…" She mimed hitting a hammer on her other hand because she couldn't remember the right word. "Dinky thing?"

"A chisel?"

"Yeah! That."

Weiss smiled. "Nope. This is good old-fashioned carving."

"That's nuts."

"There are some really talented people out there."

"Yeah."

Weiss looked over at her. "You're one of them, Ruby. You just carve up Grimm instead of blocks of stone."

Ruby happy wiggled. "Thanks! You too! Though you also sing and play the piano and the violin. And I bet your paintings are great too."

Weiss did that smiley-eye roll. "I told you they're not."

"Well I don't believe you," Ruby chirped at her as she led them away.

Weiss huffed indignantly, but she didn't actually look upset.

They turned a corner and both stopped short to stare in wonder.

A circular clearing, probably sixty feet across, with sets of statues around the sides, flowerbeds rimming the edge between them, and a gazebo sat in the center of it all, white painted wood and a red tiled roof. There were a few other people here, a group of two and a group of three walking and talking and taking pictures.

And the statues… they were statues of gods.

One set of statues was a conglomeration of animals the Ruby recognized as the Great Herd, which many faunus believed in. Spiritual representations of the many animals from which the various faunus shared traits. Each had swirl patterns carved into their fur, scales, or hide, probably to make the solid stone convey the idea of 'spirity'. There was a big ol' bear, a cat, a wolf, a fox, a shark, a spider (eep!), an eagle, and so many, many more. It was kinda crazy how many different kinds of faunus there are.

Across from them were the Dust gods, a pantheon that Ruby was pretty sure was popular in Vacuo. What were they called? The Aspects? A god for each of the natural Dust types. The fire lady looked scary, her hair a wild wick of red flame, hands curled into angry looking claws. The ice lady reminded Ruby of Weiss quite a lot from her posture, back straight, chin high, eyes and clasped hands both painted chilly blue. Earth Dude looked hella buff and like his skin was made of stone-well, obviously it was, he's a statue, but there was a cracked texture carved into his skin that made him look like he was _supposed_ to be made of stone. The magma bro was probably Ruby's favorite one. He was super tall, with wider cracks carved into his skin than the earth guy, and the insides of the cracks were painted red to look like lava flows. It was super cool. Set in the forehead of each of the seven was a crystal of the corresponding Dust: water, earth, fire, air, ice, magma, lightning. It must have taken a really freaking long time to carve them all.

Clockwise from the Aspects was Death. Yep. Death. Tall, skeletal, hooded dude with a scythe (that wasn't anywhere near as cool as Crescent Rose, by the way). He stood tall and imposing, one hand held out, fingers posed in such a way that it looked like he was beckoning the audience to come closer. Ruby couldn't even remember what that religion was called, but she knew the main premise: Death is the enemy, and life is our war against him. The Grimm are his minions, sent to bring us all to his dominion before it was our time. It was a pretty depressing belief system, because it basically said that no matter what, you'll always lose in the end. She wasn't sure how people rationalized or dealt with that. And from what little she knew of it, she'd gotten the impression it was more a doomsday cult than an actual religion. It was kind of surprising that it was given a spot here. It must be more popular than she thought.

Across from Butthead Death was… a dragon? Yep, four legs, so not a drake. Just a big ol' dragon. Was there a dragon religion out there?

"Do you know what that one's about?" Ruby asked her partner, pointing.

Weiss followed her gaze, then her steps as Ruby walked over to it.

"A little," she answered. "Some people think dragons were the source of magic-pure magic-and now that they're gone, so is magic."

"Aw."

Weiss shook her head. "I wouldn't put too much stock in it. They also think Dust is crystalized dragon's blood, so they're a little… off."

"Do we know that it's _not_?" Ruby asked.

"No, but we can do enough to change, manipulate, and combine Dust that it doesn't make any sense if it was some weird magical/biological fossil junk."

"Oh."

"It's an amazing statue, though."

That was true. The dragon was the biggest statue they'd seen, the top of its wings reaching twenty feet high. Its scales were intricate, dinner plate sized, and painted a gold that had faded a little with time, making it a deep bronze. Its head was looking down at them, calm and powerful. The eyes were two large, glowing pieces of white Dust, which… which wasn't even a natural Dust type, right? It was a product of a combination of the seven natural Dusts. So… if this religion was true, then this statue's eyes were made from the combined blood of the different dragons? Creepy. Was that even how it worked? Was ice Dust from ice dragons, fire Dust from fire dragons, and so on? Were ice dragons a thing? What would an earth dragon even be like?

Too many questions, and seeing as there were no dragons around today to study, it would probably be a bit hard to get answers.

Ruby moved on to the last set of statues, the 'centered' set across from the entrance to the clearing.

Yep, the classic.

The Lady of Light and the Lord of Darkness stood ten feet tall and facing each other. Both had their arms out to their sides, though the Lady of Light stood straight and had her palms upturned in a kind of 'dinner is served' pose, while the Lord of Darkness was crouched in a battle pose, hands curled into claws.

Behind him were creatures of Grimm, a Beowolf, an Ursa, a Boarbatusk, a Deathstalker, a Prowler, a Wrathmane, a Weaver. No Nevermore, even though they were pretty common. It was probably hard to make a flying statue, though, and not worth the effort. The current Roster of Doom was more than enough to get the point across.

Our Lady Light, by contrast, had huntsmen and huntresses behind her. It didn't look like they were anybody in particular, but there were a dozen armed and armored men and women standing behind the goddess in a group, with various weapons and expressions, the tallest of which came up to the waistline of the two large deities. Still almost as tall as Ruby, though.

"I've never liked Dichotomy," Weiss muttered.

Ruby looked at her curiously. "Why not?"

Weiss shrugged-an actual, full on, regular person shrug, not that peculiar, princessy head tilt. "It just seems silly that these gods, these higher beings, are so… binary. It they're supposed to be greater than people, and people are capable of both good and evil, then shouldn't the gods both be capable of greater good and greater evil?"

"Well, they are," Ruby said. "Lady Light is the greater good, and the Dark Lord Superjerk is the greater evil!"

Weiss sighed. "I knowww. I just… you'd think they'd be _more_ complicated than little mortals, not less."

"Huh. Hadn't thought about it that way."

Weiss arched an eyebrow. "I'm shocked."

Ruby pouted.

That got a smile from Weiss, before she turned back to the statues. "I don't know. I guess my biggest issue is having an 'evil god of darkness'." She made air quotes and used a mocky voice that could have come from Yang.

"Why's that?"

"Just… I don't know. Nobody believes they're evil, right? Like, everyone thinks they're doing the right thing, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. The White Fang think they're doing the right thing, they're all just completely insane animals, so their concept of right and wrong is just screwed up. My fa-" She cut herself off and frowned at the Lord of Darkness' feet.

"Your fa...ther?" Ruby guessed. "You don't think he's… evil, do you?"

Weiss went into frozen Nervous Weiss mode, turning more still than the statues they'd been browsing.

"Weiss?"

"No. I don't. He's just… not very nice. But he has to believe he's doing the right thing, right? Otherwise, what's the point?"

"What's the point of what?"

"My childhood."

Ruby rocked back like she'd been slapped. "What?! What do you mean?" She tried to piece together the two disconnected ideas. "Y-you mean, like, what was the point of how he treated you?"

Weiss didn't answer, staring more intently at the god statue's feet.

"It sounds like your dad is pretty awful, Weiss."

She finally turned to Ruby.

"He can be."

"But he's your _dad_! Why would he b-"

*_CRACK!*_

Ruby and Weiss both jumped at the noise, loud and coming from somewhere to Ruby's left.

"What was that?" Weiss blurted.

"It sounded like-"

_*CRACK CRACK CRACK!*_

Ruby swallowed. "Gunfire."


	20. Thaw 2-5

"Ruby, where are you going?" Weiss demanded, curt.

Ruby turned back towards her, a look of complete bafflement on her face. "To make sure everyone's okay," she answered, voice pitched like that should be obvious.

"We should call the police," Weiss said.

Ruby glanced back towards the west, where the gunshots had come from. "But people could be in danger."

"We don't have our weapons, Ruby. We can't go running in an-"

"We still have our semblances and aura and training! We can help!" Ruby took another step toward the direction of the noise.

Weiss reached out and grabbed her partner's arm and hauled her back. Ruby turned back to her, alarmed and surprised. A pang of guilt scratched at Weiss' chest for being so rough-it wasn't like her at all. She just didn't want Ruby to go running into gunfire.

She let go. "We should call the police," she repeated. "This is literally their job. We should let th-"

_*CRACK C-CRACK-K!* _

There were screams now too, scared cries of civilians. The tall hedges of the maze blocked her view, but from the volume and echoes, the gunfire seemed to be coming from across the street from which they'd entered the statue gardens.

"I'm going," Ruby declared. "Can you at least call Yang after the police and ask her to come?"

'_She wants backup,'_ Weiss realized from Ruby's request. '_She just thinks I won't follow her.'_

No. They were partners. And… and friends. If Ruby insisted on running into danger, Weiss would at least make sure she wasn't doing it alone.

"I'll come with you."

The wide smile that spread across Ruby's face was quickly wiped away by another gunshot.

"Come on," Ruby told her, already running toward the hedge.

'_What is she-'_

Ruby blurred into a red streak that shot up into the air and over the wall of foliage, streaming rose petals behind her.

'_Oh. Right.'_

Weiss quickly rushed after her, launching herself up with a white glyph, then forming a bridge of grey glyphs to run across. Ruby was faster than her, so she gave up on trying to keep up on her feet and just launched herself through the air with another white glyph.

She followed Ruby, flying over the maze of green and over the street. Below, people were running, from the movement it looked like from a storefront almost directly in front of them.

Ruby stopped a bit down the sidewalk by a civilian, a chubby, balding man with glasses, that was pressed up against a wall, scroll by his ear. He jumped in surprise as Ruby materialized beside him and Weiss dropped down beside her.

"Are you okay?" Ruby asked him earnestly.

He nodded, clearly confused who Ruby was, where she'd come from, and why she was checking on him.

"What happened?" she asked as she pulled out her own scroll.

The man blinked. "Gunshots. Some guy in a hood walked in there-" he pointed at the store Wess had narrowed it down to "-and just walked straight to the back, then there were gunshots. I got-yes, hello?" The man turned away from Ruby to listen closely to his scroll. "Yes, I'd like to report gunshots…. Yes, on Valley View, close to the intersection with Fourty-Seventh."

"Across from the statue garden," Weiss offered.

The man's head jerked back in surprise at being spoken to again. "Uh, yeah. Across from the statue garden."

Well, good. The police were informed and would be on the way.

"Stay safe," Ruby said, already moving towards the building, holding her scroll up to her ear. Gunfire was sporadically cracking and echoing out, and she was clearly anxious to… do something. "Answer your scroll, Yaaang," she grumbled to herself.

A couple seconds passed and her call ended with no answer.

"Ugh! Probably already dancing and not paying attention to her scroll." She put her scroll away and sidled up to the door, Weiss hesitantly staying at her side.

"What's the plan, Ruby?" Weiss asked as she followed, doing her best not to sound nervous. If only she had some Dust…

A dingy pawn shop. It was selling antique television boxes and blocky pre-screenfold scrolls and who knows what other knick-knacks and doodads that people that would take a year of work to afford one of Weiss' dresses considered junk. Not anywhere Weiss would ever do any shopping, that was certain.

The glass doors were shattered, though, and there were shouts and grunts like fighting noises sounding out from the back room. The occasional gunshot caused flashes of light to spark out from the crack in the door that lead back there. The storefront itself was empty.

"Uh, we, uh, go in, get the fighting to stop, try to help anyone that's wounded?" Ruby replied.

"Is that a question?" Weiss returned archly.

"I-no." Ruby put on a determined face. "We need to stop the shooting."

She lead the way inside, Weiss still following close behind. They both stepped gingerly over the broken glass around the entrance, though the people fighting in the back likely had no chance of hearing them if they'd stopped to tap dance on the shards instead.

"I wish Yang was here," Ruby muttered to herself.

They crept forward to the back door, passing by the front counter that had a scuffed and cloudy glass case displaying pawned jewelry and watches and the sort. Most were unpolished, several just straight up broken or missing bits and pieces. Hideous, all of them.

A part of Weiss, the part that was itching with nervous energy from walking into danger unprepared, wanted to comment on the jewelry, break this overwhelming quiet between her and Ruby as they moved toward the sounds of fighting with held breath. She didn't, though. Now was not the time. She could imagine Winter showing up out of nowhere to slap her for getting distracted at such a critical moment.

'_Focus, Weiss.'_

The anxiety mostly stemmed from her lack of Myrtenaster. She'd feel far more in control of the situation if she was able to Dust cast or stab someone should the need arise. From the way Ruby's hand kept drifting to her back and grasping at empty air where she'd normally have Crescent Rose holstered, Weiss knew her partner felt the same.

Yet she still insisted on moving forward.

They got to the door, the sounds of the fighting both louder in volume and quieter in frequency as they peered nervously through the crack from the door being slightly ajar. Either there were less combatants now or they were getting further away.

"Ready?" Ruby asked Weiss.

"No," she stated flatly.

"'Kay, let's go."

Ruby pushed the door open, revealing a large, dark room that looked like a small warehouse. Crates were stacked all around, making artificial lanes, some popped open to reveal… were those _guns?_

In the back was a pickup truck parked in front of an open garage door, small rectangular boxes stacked in the truck bed. That's where the fighting was happening.

It was dark, most of the light in the room coming in from the open garage door, yellow rays that were probably came from streetlights out of view, so all Weiss could really make out were silhouettes. It looked… it looked like one guy with a knife was fighting three other men, one of which had a hand gun. There were… there were bodies on the floor, one of which very clearly had a pool of blood around it, though the blood looked almost black in the gloom.

"All of you, _stop!_" Ruby suddenly shouted.

All four of the men fighting suddenly stopped, probably out of surprise, and looked over at them. The man with the gun pointed it their way, and a strange silence settled over the room.

'_Damn it, Ruby.'_

"Who's them chicks?" one of the men men wondered aloud in a gruff, heavily accented voice.

The break in the silence seemed to prompt the hooded man back into action. He threw his knife at the man with the gun, the blade sinking into the target's neck, the man collapsing an instant later.

Weiss flinched.

That was… he…

"HEY!" Ruby shouted. She blurred forward and slammed into the hooded man as the two friends of the gunmen both turned to do the same. She was still in her 'rose form' when she made contact, so the man only staggered back slightly. Ruby materialized in front of him and swung a fist, slamming it into the man's jawbone and…

And not doing much.

The man's head jerked a little with the impact, but then he just turned it back and looked down at Ruby. Weiss couldn't make out his expression in the dark.

"Uh," Ruby said, almost inaudible from across the room.

'_Crap.'_

Weiss started running forward to back up her partner. One of the non-hooded men rushed to the side of the one who'd just gotten a knife in his neck and reached down to grab the gun.

'_No.'_

Weiss summoned a white glyph parallel to the ground, just above the weapon, to block the man's hand and push it away. He stumbled back as his arm was thrust back up into the air, confused.

The hooded man shook off the shock of Ruby's tiny punch and kicked out at her. She was apparently ready for it, because she blurred red just before the kick connected. The wreath of red moved back a couple inches with the kick, probably Ruby taking a step back in her alternate dimension, then rocketed over the man's head and landed behind him, raining petals down around him as she moved. She came back to reality there and pushed the man in the back, making him stumble forward and have to catch himself on the side mirror of the truck.

"Stop fighting!" Ruby shouted, voice an octave higher than normal, shrill and sounding far more scared than she probably meant to.

What was Weiss supposed to do? How was she supposed to help? They didn't have a plan, she hadn't trained for this, they didn't kno-

The man that hadn't reached for the gun took a step toward the hooded man and slammed his fist into the side of the guy's face. _That_ apparently did damage, because the hooded man was pushed into the side of the truck, and Weiss noticed a flash of pale green light on his face where the fist made contact.

Aura. He had aura.

"STOP!" Ruby shouted, rushing forward and trying to tackle the punching man, wrapping her arms around and throwing her weight into the man's midsection.

It wasn't enough. The man started to side shuffle with the hit, but he wasn't getting knocked over.

Weiss summoned a small white glyph by the man's ankle, cutting off his ability to move to the side and pushing his foot back the other way.

That did it. The man tripped and fell, smacking his head into the ground with a dull thunk, Ruby sprawling out to the side.

The hooded man took the opportunity to straighten up. He reached out to the side with one hand, toward the other side of the truck where the other man and the gunman he'd just… he'd just _killed_ were. The knife that was in the dead man's neck pulled out and spun back towards the hooded man, stopping a foot off to the side of his outstretched hand. He reached over and grabbed it.

Telekinesis? Or some sort of gravity Dust system worked into the knife? No, there was no purple glow.

So he had aura and a semblance he knew how to use. Was this one of those rogue huntsman Professor Rustheart had talked about?

Ruby started pushing herself to her feet, then went 'rose form' to hasten the process, pushing herself into a battle-ready crouch in a quick blur of petals.

As she did that, the hooded man, now armed with the knife again, tried to kneel down and stab the prone, dazed man Weiss and Ruby had tripped in one fluid motion. The quickness and unexpectedness of the attack caught Weiss off guard, and she didn't react quickly enough. She tried to summon a glyph to shield the fallen man, but by the time it started forming, the hooded man's hand was there, and the glyph dissipated around the obstacle.

The knife plunged into the man's chest, all the way to the hilt.

Weiss flinched again.

That was her fault. She should have been able to save him. She hadn't been quick enough. And it was her fault that the man was unable to protect himself in the first place. It has her glyph that had tripped him, left him concussed on the floor, defenseless.

'_...'_

"NOOO!" Ruby screamed, quickly throwing a flurry of fists into the hooded man's head and shoulder that didn't seem to affect him all that much.

The hooded man swiped an arm out to block her as he stood, pulling the knife out of the other man's chest. The stabbed man gasped as the blade pulled out, and a flicker of hope ignited in Weiss. He was still alive! Maybe he'd survive. The police were on their way, maybe they could help him?

The man on the other side of the truck tried to go for the gun again and Weiss summoned a large black glyph behind him. It pulled him into it, spread-eagled like he'd just run into a wall cartoon-style, and she left him there, holding the glyph in place.

Ruby gave up on trying to punch the hooded man. She blurred again, a swirl of petals obscuring them both, and suddenly she was on the man's back, arms around his neck, trying to yank him backwards.

"Who. ARE. You?!" the man yelled, his voice a medium baritone that Weiss had been expecting to be much deeper, though she wasn't sure why. He ran forward with Ruby on his back, then suddenly wasn't there, morphing into a swirl of green energy that looked like thick, almost liquidy smoke with arcs of curved, white lightning flickering around it. Ruby crashed through the smoke and into the floor as the swirl of energy zipped back along the path he'd just traveled to where he had first been standing before he started running. The veridian smoke condensed and blurred, and suddenly the man was there again.

How did this guy work?!

When Ruby hit the ground, she rolled a couple times on her side with the momentum, and it looked rough-rough enough that her red aura sparked at her knees and elbows where they scraped the concrete floor.

The hooded man took a step toward her, and Weiss quickly summoned a large black glyph behind him to trap him the same way she had the other man. It worked, the man slamming back into the dark snowflake of force. As long as he didn't-

'_Crap.'_

The hooded man tried flaring his aura to resist the pull of the glyph and was able to take a heavy step forward. The glyph was still pulling, tugging on strands of the light green energy field crackling just above his skin, wavy lines of it making contact with the black surface and dissipating in motes of bright dust.

Well, at least she was shredding through a little bit of his aura.

After making sure the man on the other side of the truck was still trapped by the other glyph she was maintaining, Weiss rushed forward to Ruby to help her pick herself up.

It was getting harder to keep up the glyph she was using to hold back the hooded man. She was pouring more and more of her aura into it to pull him harder, and the outer rings were starting to spin erratically and out-of-sync with the inner rings as the glyph started to destabilize.

"Who are you?!" Ruby demanded. "Why are you doing this?!"

The hooded man took another step, hunched forward with effort like he was walking into a strong headwind.

He was strong. And Weiss was losing aura fast.

"Who are _you_?!" he fired back. "I'll cut up little huntress enforcers if I need to-I already beat the twins. Get out. Of my. Way!"

With that, he threw his weight forward, the jerky motion pulling him a good foot from Weiss' glyph. She let it drop, and the sudden lack of resistance sent the man tumbling forward, landing on his hands and knees.

There was no space between the man's hands and the floor to summon more black glyphs to bind him, so instead Weiss summoned a large white glyph above him, parallel to the ground, and pinned him down. He slammed to the floor with a huff.

He was close enough now that Weiss could see that under his hood he was wearing what appeared to be the lower half of a ski mask, his lower face covered. His eyes were visible, though in this lighting it was hard to tell if they were grey or green or yellow.

Ruby ran up and kicked the hand that held the knife, though she wasn't strong enough to knock it away. Green light sparked at the man's wrist and he growled, slashing wildly out. The blade of the knife hit Ruby's ankle, her aura flashing to protect her. She yelped, probably from surprise and fear, not pain, and leapt back, landing beside Weiss.

While the man struggled to push himself up, green aura sparkling around him as he resisted the push of Weiss' glyph, Ruby took the break to ask the obvious question.

"What twins?"

The hooded man paused and craned his head up to try to look Ruby in the eyes. Weiss didn't like that, and gave a brief flare of extra strength in her glyph to push the man back down. She probably shouldn't have, she was probably something close to half spent on her aura, having only started the day at around eighty-something percent after yesterday's fight with Ruby, but this man had just tried to cut Ruby.

"Gah!" He panted a bit as he pushed himself back up. "You're not Junior's?"

Ruby crossed her arms and glared. "I'm not a _junior_, I'm almost sixteen!"

"I-what?" the man sputtered in confusion. "I mean are you working for Junior?"

"Uh…" Ruby turned and looked at Weiss questioningly, but Weiss was so uncomfortable and unfamiliar and unprepared for this situation that all she could do was blink back, wide-eyed.

"No?" Ruby finished.

"You don't sound so sure," the man grunted.

"Is Junior the name of a _person_?" Weiss asked, her anxiety making the gears in her brain turn uncomfortably, frustratingly slowly.

And apparently that one sentence caused enough of a lapse in focus for the man to break through Weiss' glyph. He heaved himself up, aura sparking so violently as he crashed into the glyph it looked like a detonation of monochrome fireworks, and the glyph shattered with a sound like breaking glass. The shock made her drop the glyph holding the other man, too, and he took the opportunity to slip quietly out the garage door.

Weiss let him go. Better he got away from this stabbing psychopath.

The hooded man staggered to his feet and crouched low, ready to fight, dagger held upside down in his hand.

"Yes, Junior. You know, local crime boss? Been peddling guns and drugs and women in Vale for decade?"

"Oh," Ruby said. "Sounds like a bad guy."

The man's eyes narrowed and his face twisted a bit under his mask. "Yeah," he sneered sarcastically. "Bit of a bad guy. And you're defending his men." He gestured to the dead or dying men scattered on the floor around the room

Weiss used the opportunity to give an actual inspection to the room and crates nearby. Guns, a mix of handguns and rifles, were visible in the couple of open wooden crates. On a far table in the corner were stacks of packets of grey powder that Weiss was fairly certain would be flake, an addictive, hard drug made from depleted Dust crystals.

"Oh," Ruby said again. "But… wait, is that what you're doing here? Trying to stop bad guys?"

The man waved his arms out to the side. "Duh."

"B-but you can't just _kill_ them!" Ruby protested.

"Why not?"

Ruby looked at Weiss, then back at the man. "Because that just makes you a bad guy too!"

The hooded man just shrugged. "If I have to be a bad guy to make sure these assholes can't hurt anyone ever again, I'll do it. Now I'll ask one more time-_who are you_?"

"Um. I'm Ruby. This-"

"Ruby_!"_ Weiss shouted.

"What?!"

"Don't tell the crazy knife killer your _name_!"

Ruby blinked. "Oh. Right."

The distant sound of sirens rang out, causing them all to briefly look out the garage door opening where it was coming from.

"I'm not a crazy knife killer," the man growled, turning back to them slowly. "If you're not a scumbag criminal then I don't have a problem with you."

"We're _not_ criminals," Weiss shot back at him.

"We're huntresses!" Ruby said quickly. "We're students at Beacon!"

"_Ruby!" _

Ruby flinched when Weiss shouted at her. "Agh! Sorryyy!"

"Huntresses?" the hooded man ask. "What are you doing _here_?"

"Great question," Weiss muttered to herself. Ruby heard, though, and shot her a weaponized pout.

She turned back to the killer. "We were just walking around the maze thingy over there after dinner and we heard gunshots. We just came to stop the fighting and make sure everyone was okay." She glanced around at the bodies around them, eyes stopping on the gasping man with a hole in his chest that Weiss had failed to protect. "He needs help," Ruby said. "If I move to him, are you gonna try to stab me?"

The man heaved a deep breath, taking way too long to give an answer, in Weiss' opinion. "No. I'm leaving. I did what I came to do."

"You're not going anywhere," Weiss declared, surprising herself with her ferventness. And Ruby too, apparently, from the look of surprise her partner was giving her. She cleared her throat and continued, "You're staying here and waiting for the cops."

The man scoffed. "I'm leaving. You can take the time to try to stop me-and you'll fail-or you can try to save this pathetic jackass." There was a heavy pause. "Your choice."

Weiss looked to Ruby, unsure of what she was supposed to do. This man was clearly dangerous, and if they let him go he would certainly go on to continue killing people. Weiss was fairly certain he was the one responsible for the killings she saw on the news in the coffee shop earlier today.

On the other hand… that man was dying. And Weiss was supposed to have saved him.

She wasn't sure he was as much of a priority now that she knew he was a criminal, but that was… that was wrong, right? He was still a person that had the right to not be left bleeding out on the dirty floor of a drug front garage. The police would arrest him and see that he sees justice, and Weiss should do her best to make sure he lives for that…. right?

"Ruby? What do we do?"

"Um. Help the bleeding guy?" she offered, her voice pitching it up and making it a question. She was doing that a lot. Self doubt?

Weiss nodded. She still felt off about that decision-it seemed like an unbalanced trade for one inferior life over another that would end many more lives-but she wasn't confident her evaluation was sound, so she'd follow Ruby's lead.

Plus, Ruby was the team leader. This was the kind of thing she was _supposed_ to leave up to Ruby, right?

Ruby took a hesitant step forward, and the hooded man took a step back to match. He slowly raised his hands up, as if in surrender, and started moving backwards toward the open garage door.

"If you talk to the cops, tell them I said 'you're welcome'," he said when he reached the threshold. With that, he turned and broke into a run.

Ruby rushed to the fallen, gasping man's side. His t-shirt was thick and heavy with blood, and she let out a little whimper as she looked at the wound.

"What do I do?!" she cried out. She started unbuttoning her vest.

"What are you doing?" Weiss asked, though she already suspected she knew the answer.

"We have to stop the bleeding, right?" Ruby looked up to her, wide-eyed.

"Yes. Just… don't use…" Weiss trailed off and searched around for a suitable bandage. She _really_ didn't want Ruby ruining her brand new vest.

Her eyes settled on stacks of something that looked like cloth on the far table with the drugs. Were those pillowcases?

It would have to do.

She launched herself over the truck and glyph-skated over to the table, grabbing the closest approximation she could find to a clean sheet from the stack and rushed back over to Ruby.

"Here, press this to the wound."

Ruby whimpered again. "There's so much blooood," she whispered as she pressed the pillowcase to the wound gingerly with her fingers, like she was scared to touch the blood. She was squatting awkwardly too, keeping the blood on the pool from touching her slacks, though it still pooled around her boots. Weiss was silently glad she'd decided not to nag Ruby to wear her heels to dinner.

Weiss moved to check the other other bodies lying on the ground. Four others in total, three men, one of him was the gunmen they'd watched take a throwing knife to the throat, and one woman. All of them dead, as far as Weiss could tell. She wrinkled her nose as she checked each one's throat for a pulse, disliking the contact with a stranger's skin, and felt nothing on any of them.

"I wish Yang was here," Ruby said again, quietly.

"I wish I had some Dust," Weiss lamented with her.

Well, there were guns here. Maybe they had some unlicensed Dust here too. Weiss stood and moved to check some of these crates.

"Could you heal him or something if you did?" Ruby asked, voice shaky.

"What?" Weiss said absently as she searched the crates. Guns, gun-sword hybrids that were the mass produced knockoff huntsman weapons that jammed more than they ever worked (these ones bore the stylized W of Winchester Arms), _grenades_, but no Dust so far. "No, but I could freeze the wound. I think that would work."

"Oh. Yeah. Or you could cauterize the cut with fire Dust?"

"Maybe. I think there's more to cauterizing a wound than just heat, though. I'm not sure."

"Crap."

Weiss turned. "What happened?"

Ruby blinked at her from where she knelt by the bleeding man. "Huh? Nothing. I just mean…" She waved a hand around. "Crap."

"Ah. Yeah," Weiss agreed.

"Hey, mister?" Ruby said to the man, whose ragged breaths had gotten dangerously weaker and quieter. "Mister, can you hear me?"

The sirens were getting closer now. Very close, in fact. Soon they'd be able to hand this horrible situation off to trained professionals that were _supposed_ to handle it.

She wanted to be mad at Ruby for dragging them both into this awfulness and ruining the night they'd fixed after Blake had… Blaked out at Weiss again, but she knew she shouldn't be. Ruby just wanted to help and be a hero, and that was what huntresses were supposed to do. According to Professor Rustheart, they'd likely have to do this kind of thing anyway. This hooded maniac probably qualified as one of the rogue huntsmen he'd talked about.

"I think you need to press harder, Ruby," she said gently, giving up on her search for Dust and walking back to her partner's side.

Ruby let out another whimper and pressed down with her full palm. The man coughed and winced in pain.

"I'm sorry," Ruby said quietly.

"Help is on the way," Weiss added. She gestured to Ruby's shaking hands. "Do you want me to take over?"

Honestly, she didn't want to touch the man's blood either, but Ruby looked so distraught right now, she wanted to do anything she could to help make this easier for her.

Ruby shook her head slightly. "It's okay. This was my idea. And blood on your princess hands would be terrible."

Weiss wasn't sure she understood the sentiment, but it sounded like a compliment, so she appreciated it. And it was nice to not have to touch blood.

"Hold on, Mister Criminal. Help's almost here," Ruby said.

That was true. The sirens sounded like they were right outside. A few moments later and they heard the stomping of boots. Bright beams of white light soon cut through the gloom through the doorway they'd entered from.

Two police officers in the grey and yellow uniforms of Vale came through the door, shouting, guns raised, followed by two more.

"HANDS UP! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!"

"No, stop!" Ruby cried out, not moving even as Weiss raised her hands to show she was harmless. "We're the good guys!"

"HANDS UP!" the man that had shouted repeated.

The other lead officer actually paid attention to what was going on, though. "WE NEED A GURNEY, NOW!" he shouted behind him. He rushed over to Ruby's side and brusquely shoved her away, though she didn't seem to care. She mostly looked relieved to be able to stumble away from the blood. Her hands were shaking as she held them over her stomach.

The first cop that shouted had his gun leveled at Ruby's chest, and that was making Weiss even more anxious than she already was. "We're huntresses-in-training at Beacon," she told him, hoping the explanation would calm the man down. "We were across the street and heard gunshots and came over to help… Please stop pointing your gun at my partner."

The cop blinked at her, unmoving. "What do you think, Mack?"

One of the cops that came in second walked closer to Weiss. "Put your gun down, Celsin. They're just girls."

Weiss wanted to take offense at that comment, but it was in their benefit at the moment, so she let it slide without remark. Her eyes stayed glued to the gun that was pointed at Ruby as the man slowly lowered, then holstered it.

'Mack' addressed Weiss as Ruby tiptoed over to them. "Officer Burt Macklin," he introduced himself, extending a hand.

"Weiss Schnee," Weiss responded, allowing her hand to be crushed. "This is Ruby Rose."

"Schnee, huh?" He looked her up and down critically, and Weiss resisted the urget to shiver. "What happened?"

Ruby was too busy staring uncomprehendingly at the slick blood on her hands to contribute, so Weiss took a deep breath and steeled her nerves to answer.

"We heard gunshots from the statue garden, ran over to stop the fighting. When we got here there was a man in a hood and mask with a knife fighting these guys. He k-he killed that one when we showed up, and I wasn't fast enough to stop him from stabbing this guy. One of these criminals got away, and he walked away too."

Two people that looked like medical officers came in through the door carrying an unfolding gurney between the two of them. They rushed past Weiss and Ruby and Officer Macklin. One started taking care of the gasping man while the other checked the other bodies.

"You just let him walk away?"

Weiss bristled at that. It's not like it was her and Ruby's job to apprehend the killer anyway-it would be someday, most likely, but right now they were just students. The fact that they helped at all should be appreciated.

"We had to choose between trying to fight him without our weapons when he just showed us he has no problems with killing or trying to keep this man alive. We cho-"

"We got another live one!" the medic that had been checking the dead shouted.

"What?" Weiss blurted.

"Problem?" Officer Macklin asked suspiciously.

"I-no. I just checked the others earlier and didn't feel a pulse on any of them."

"Ah." He relaxed. "When pulses get weak it can be easy to miss them. Check for breathing. If you have a mirror or glass, it'll fog up if you place it under their nose."

"Okay," Weiss responded numbly.

"This hooded man. Can you describe him?"

Ruby finally spoke up. "Not a man."

"He was definitely a man," Weiss argued.

"No, I mean he wasn't an adult. He was a teenager."

"Oh?" Weiss and the officer both said at the same time.

"How could you tell?" Weiss asked.

Ruby shrugged and looked at the ground. "Just could. I got a lot closer to him than you did. He was, um, like _this_ tall-" she held her hand up a few inches above the top of her head "-and, um, white? And I'm pretty sure he had grey eyes. It was hard to tell. And he could freaking time rewind himself!"

"What? Is _that_ what he was doing?" Weiss asked.

"I _think_ so. He made that knife go back to where it was when he threw it, and he got me off his back by running forward and then rewinding back."

Weiss replayed the events Ruby was talking about in her head. "Huh. You're right."

Ruby gave her a small smile.

"Sounds like the guy we're looking for," Officer Macklin said.

Weiss nodded. Figures.

"Did he say anything? Did he talk to you at all?"

"Yeah," Ruby said quietly. "He told us these guys are criminal dudes that do a bunch of bad stuff. He thought we worked for some guy named Junior when we first got here."

"Really hope that's not his _actual_ name," Weiss muttered.

"It's not," Officer Macklin responded absently.

"You know him?" Ruby asked.

"Yes."

"He sounds like a bad guy. You might want to arrest him or something."

The officer scoffed. "As far as 'bad guys' go, he's pretty tame. Easier to handle than some of the bosses we've had to deal with in the past."

"Oh."

Weiss frowned. That didn't sound right at all, did it? A criminal doing bad things and hurting people should be stopped, even if he hurts people less than someone else did.

It was clear from her scrunched eyebrows that Ruby felt the same, but neither said anything. An adult with an air of authority that also happened to be a policeman was more than a little intimidating.

The officer looked around the room and took in the contraband one by one. He clicked on his radio and said, "Get CSU down here." He turned to Weiss and Ruby.

"Alright, ladies. I'm gonna need you to head up front and give your full statement to the officers there."

"I just want to go home," Ruby whined softly to the ground. Weiss, after a brief moment of hesitation, reached out to grab her hand, then remembered the blood and settled on wrapping her fingers around Ruby's arm just above the elbow.

Officer Macklin watched the exchange. "Tsch. Sorry girls. Procedures. Tell ya what, when you get out there, ask for Officer Rio. Tell her Mack said to make it fast. Will you need a ride home?"

"No," Weiss said quickly. The idea of riding in the back of a squad car was… unappealing.

"Mm. Alright. Go on, and make sure to give her your scroll IDs so we can call you if we have more questions. And Ruby, was it?"

Ruby looked up at him, wide-eyed.

"If you need to stop by the ambulance and get cleaned up, feel free. If you need to talk to someone, we can get you in to see one of our trauma counselors."

Ruby blinked. "Uh."

The officer smiled ruefully. "Well, think about it. Go on, and thank you, both of you, for stepping in and… yeah, stepping in." His words were halting, unsure. Fair, as he probably hadn't had to thank many teenage girls for fighting off a killer from a group of weapons and drug dealers before.

One of the medics zoomed past them, pushing the gurney with the man whose blood was coating Ruby's hands.

"We could go after him," Ruby told Weiss as they walked. "I could probably catch him."

Weiss shook her head. "We have no idea which way he went. And it's _not our job_, Ruby."

"But it needs to be done! And we can do it when others can't, so shouldn't we?" She looked so torn up it made Weiss' heart ache but she didn't understand why.

"Not tonight," Weiss hedged. "We've dealt with enough tonight."

Ruby nodded slowly. "Yeaaah," she sighed, exhausted.

Grateful for the agreement, Weiss nodded and looked ahead to guide them through the storefront to the outside, where the yellow and white lights of the police cars were flashing through the windows and casting everything in strange shades.

That's when she saw it, hanging out from underneath the man on the gurney. A tail.

She stopped in her tracks.

"Weiss? What's wrong?"

"We did all that to save a _faunus_?" she replied. That was ironic, considering what had been going on all day with Blake. She spent all day having to explain and justify why faunus were bad and now she went and accidently put herself and Ruby in danger trying to save one. She should have guessed the drug dealing, weapon smuggling criminal was an animal. If they ha-

"What do you mean?" Ruby asked. "Of course we would! He needed saving!"

"But he's-"

"_Please_ don't tell me you think we should have let him die because of something as stupid as a tail," Ruby said, a bit of steel in her tone.

"No! No." That's not what she was saying. Was it? No. She just thought that… maybe… what? He should have been less of a priority? That they should have gone after the killer instead of trying to save him?

She could tell from the hard look in Ruby's eyes that it would be bad to say that, though.

Apparently the silence was bad enough, though. Ruby huffed and pulled her arm away, starting to walk off.

"Ruby!"

Ruby whirled around, angry. "You know, Weiss, I think you're awesome but you're really starting to make me mad."

"Ex_cuse_ me?"

"How can you think we should have let him die?!"

"I d-"

"We're supposed to protect people!"

"They're not p-"

"Yes they ARE!"

Weiss balled her fists. She really didn't like being yelled at like this. It reminded her too much of home, though the substance was inverted. Ruby seemed to realize she'd gotten loud, because she looked around quickly before dropping her voice to a hush.

"Isn't the fact that you couldn't even tell he was a faunus proof that they're not all that different from humans?"

"I…"

Huh.

That was true-she hadn't been able to tell. It was dark in that room, though, and her focus when looking at him had been the stab wound on his chest. And… and it wasn't just about their physical differences from humans. They were mentally and emotionally animals.

"Whatever," Ruby muttered uncharacteristically, walking off. Weiss allowed a few feet of space to separate them, then followed. Outside there were two cops standing guard and keeping concerned and/or citizens back, along with three police cars and an ambulance blocking off the entrance to the store. The tight space they made around the doors was a little claustrophobic.

Ruby headed straight for the ambulance where the secretly-a-monkey-faunus criminal was getting loaded in. Weiss went towards the two police officers.

"Officer Rio?" she asked when she was close, prompting them both to turn her way.

A man and a woman, both young adults. Likely rookies, which might be why they were out here.

"Yes?" the woman said.

"Mack-Officer Macklin told me and my partner to come ask for you to give our statements, and he said to make it fast."

Officer Rio squinted a bit and glanced at the other officer. "And who are you?"

Weiss sighed inwardly. "I'm Weiss Schnee. My partner-" she pointed toward the ambulance, where Ruby was washing her hands off with one of the medics using a solution from some bottle "-are huntresses-in-training at Beacon. We came over when we heard gunfire to try to help."

Rio nodded slowly and pulled out a notebook and pen from one of the many pouches on her belt.

"Child heroes, huh?" the other cop muttered sardonically.

"Heroines," Weiss snidely corrected back.

Officer Rio waved a dismissive hand at the man. "Alright, c'mon." She walked a few feet away, Weiss following. "Your partner get hurt?"

"No. Just got blood on her hands. She was trying to keep that… man in the ambulance from bleeding out."

"Ah. 'Kay." She put pen to paper. "Walk me through exactly what happened."

The next fifteen minutes was spent recounting events and giving descriptions, both Weiss and Ruby, when she walked over. It was mind-numbingly frustrating having to repeat everything so much, but Weiss swallowed her annoyance and followed the system.

An eternity later and Weiss and Ruby were in a car heading back to Beacon. Ruby was trying to call Yang for the third time since they left the garage.

"Why. Won't. You. Answer. Your. Scroll?!" She punctuated each word with a punch to the screen of her scroll.

"It's not your scroll's fault, Ruby. Don't ta-"

"You be quiet!" Ruby shot at Weiss.

Weiss was stunned into silence for a moment before she got angry. "Excuse me?"

"I'm mad at you," Ruby stated bluntly. "And I don't like _being_ mad at you, and I'd rather just not talk to you while I'm mad 'cause I don't want to say something mean."

"Why are you m-"

"Because you're being a jerk! You're being a big dumb jerk and I hate it 'cause you're really cool when you're being not a jerk!"

"I'm n-"

"And I don't understand _why_ you're being a jerk, but it's stupid. And that makes it worse because you're smart, so I don't understand why you're being stupid!" \

"Don't _call _m-"

"I don't _want_ to! That's why I said I don't want to talk to you while I'm mad!"

"Stop interrupting me!"

A brief silence cut through the bickering. Ruby started snapping her scroll open and shut absentmindedly.

She sighed. "Are you going to say something mean and stupid about an entire race of people?"

"I'm not being mean _or_ stupid!" Weiss protested.

Ruby's head jerked back in surprise. "Okay, I'm sure you have your reasons for hating faunus, so I can see why you'd think you're not being stupid, but how can you _possibly_ believe you're not being mean?"

"It's not mean if they deserve it."

Ruby took a deep breath. "Weiss, how would you feel if someone said they hated all white-haired people because _one_ punched them in the face?"

"I'd say that was ridiculous and not enough data to be indicative of a group."

Ruby blinked. "Uh. Right. Sure. So why do you think it's okay to think that way about faunus?"

"Because there _is_ enough data to be indicative of the group, Ruby! They're criminals!"

"Not all of them!"

"A lot of them are!"

"Yeah, but there are a lot of faunus, Weiss. Just like there are a lot of human criminals because there are a lot of humans!"

"I… sure, but-"

"No 'buts', Weiss. There are a lot of really nice faunus out there. You just haven't met enough of them to see that!"

"Maybe I haven't met them because they don't exist!"

Ruby turned and leaned forward earnestly. "They do, Weiss. _I've_ met plenty. Do you think I'm a liar?"

Of all the confrontational things Ruby had been saying, that hit Weiss the hardest.

"Of course not! I just… I just think you can be wrong."

Ruby groaned and turned away, smacking her head into the the car window and keeping it there. "I give up."

"You gi-ha!" That was fresh. Ruby giving up on _her_. On Weiss.

"Can we just stop talking for a little bit?" Ruby asked tiredly.

"Fine."

The silence that settled was aggravating, which was weird for Weiss because she normally liked silence. Silence was safe. Silence meant her parents weren't screaming at her. But right now it meant Ruby was mad at her, and that felt… She felt like she must have done something really wrong to make Ruby mad at her but she hadn't, so she was just left feeling unsettled and anxious. Backwards, that silence back home meant success but silence with Ruby meant failure.

Except she hadn't failed!

She spent the next twenty minutes of the ride wringing her fingers and glaring at the floor next to Ruby's feet. She would usually be enjoying the view of the city nightlife, but she couldn't shake or rationalize away the feeling that she didn't deserve to right now. Instead it was Ruby that gazed out the window, blankly, her head resting against the glass and softly thunking into it whenever the car hit a bump.

They got dropped off at the roundabout and walked to the dorms together in silence, a tense couple of extra feet separating them more than usual.

"I'm going to bed," Weiss said quietly-though her voice sounded thunderously loud in her own ears-when they got to their room.

"'Kay," Ruby replied, just as quietly. "I'm gonna stay up and wait for Yang to get back so I can yell at her stupid face for not answering her scroll."

"Alright." Weiss took that to mean she had first dibs on the bathroom and starting getting ready for bed. Brushed her teeth, washed her face, changed into a nightgown. She found some now-dried specks of blood on her fingernails and spent five minutes scrubbing them clean.

She looked at her face in the mirror. Her hair was a bit frazzled. And every time she blinked she saw flashes of the dying monkey faunus.

'_Gah!'_

She stomped back out to the room. Ruby had taken her boots off and was sitting up on her bed, her legs hanging over the edge as she kicked her feet and played a game on her scroll. Her eyes didn't have the same sparkle as they usually did. She looked unfocused, like she was looking through the scroll's screen instead of at it.

"You okay?" Weiss asked.

"No," was the simple response.

And Weiss didn't know how to help.

"Try to get some sleep, Ruby. Yang and Blake will probably be out late. You can always yell at her in the morning."

"I don't want to close my eyes."

Weiss sighed. "Me neither."

"Wanna go play HR2 with me?" Ruby asked, eyes going wide with hope while her kicking feet stilled.

It took just a moment of looking at that face for Weiss to melt.

"Sure."

"Yay," Ruby cheered weakly, hopping down.

"One request, though?"

Ruby froze. "Yeah?"

"Can we not do any levels with the White Fang in them?" She had had enough conflict over faunes for the day. She really didn't want to risk provoking any more.

Ruby relaxed. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds fair."

"Thanks."

* * *

**Quick note: I made an edit to the description of Mr. Killer Dude in Chapter 15 - Interlude 1. I realized I could do something neat with him...**

**Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading. As always, reviews are super welcome and mentions on the r/RWBY subreddit's fanfiction friday thread are greatly appreciated. **

**(Also remember, if you leave a review as a guest, I can't respond :/ ) **


	21. Thaw 2-6

It took all of two minutes of playing to realize video games were now dead to her _forever_.

"Can we watch TV or something instead?" Ruby asked after she'd just pressed a button and caused a dude to collapse in a spray of blood.

Weiss did her nervous finger twisting. "I-I thought you wanted to play Huntsman Royale," she stammered softly, like she was afraid if she spoke too aggressively Ruby might break.

Or that Ruby might break _her_. She'd definitely raised her voice and gotten really angry a little while ago. She regretted it already. She'd just been super freaked out that she'd _just seen people die_ and then Weiss had started saying anti-faunus dumb crap again, and Ruby had kinda snapped.

And now Weiss, after her reflexive angry defiance, was acting like Ruby was an eggshell and a bomb at the same time.

"I did. I just… don't feel like watching people die, even if they're pixelated." Honesty was always the best.

"Ah. Yeah, that's… yeah."

Weiss put her controller on the coffee table and Ruby reached out to grab it. Suddenly she realized that her hands were once again covered in blood. Dripping red, the liquid spreading up her fingers, palms, arms.

With a yelp, she drew her hand back, but the blood was gone.

She never thought she could hate the color red so much.

"You okay?" Weiss asked her, making Ruby wince. No, she wasn't okay. She was supposed to be a superhero that slays evil monsters, not a useless child that couldn't do anything to save people from a crazy killer dude. But that's exactly what she was tonight.

"Yep! Sorry. Thought I, uh, saw a ghost!"

Maybe honesty wasn't _always_ the best.

She zipped around to put Weiss' and her own controller on the tv stand, turned off the gaming console, and zipped back to the couch, bouncing on the cushion next to her partner.

"Where's the remote?"

"How should I know?" Weiss asked. "You used it to switch to TV two."

"Oh yeah."

Ruby looked around. She checked on the coffee table.

Nope.

Under the coffee table?

Nope.

Between the couch cushions?

Nope.

Under the couch?

"Hm. I dunno what I did with it." She turned to Weiss for help. "Are you sure you haven't-"

The remote was in Weiss'' hands, which were resting gently on her lap. Her lips were pursed together really hard to keep from smiling, but her eyes were doing it for her.

"Yer a butt," Ruby griped, picking herself up off the floor.

Weiss' lips twitched.

Ruby snatched the device from Butt's hands with a fake-grumpy huff, bouncing again and jostling Weiss (not nearly enough). Weiss moved a bit, crossing her legs, and when they were both resettled Ruby realized they were both gently leaning against each other's shoulders.

The support was nice.

She switched back to the TV and started flipping through channels to find Cartoon Station. It was channel 62, right?

Oh. No. Guess the channels in Vale City were different than the ones in Patch.

"Do you know which channel Cartoon Station is?" she asked. It was a long shot, but-

"Uh, _no_," Weiss responded, clearly saying 'I don't watch cartoons' with her tone.

"Hnnngh!"

Ruby went back to flipping through channels. She looked down at the remote in her hands, trying to find a button that said 'TV Guide' or something. Maybe she could fi-

Her fingers were covered in blood again.

She must have made some sort of noise because Weiss' head jerked towards her.

"What's wrong?" she asked urgently.

"N-nothing! Sorry." Ruby went back to quickly flicking through channels.

"See another ghost in the remote?" Weiss pressed skeptically.

"Nooo, that's silly!" Ruby replied, trying to be distracting with an upbeat, cheery tone.

"Ruby, what's wrong?" Weiss demanded, crossing her arms and turning her body to face Ruby. She lifted her legs up a bit, resting them across the side of Ruby's thigh, the weight serving to keep Ruby in place. Or rather, to let Ruby know Weiss _wanted _her to stay. It wouldn't be enough to stop Ruby from Rosing away she wanted to.

_Did_ she want to?

"You _said_ you were always honest," Weiss prodded her.

Darn her, using Ruby's words against her. She was right though, Ruby had said that. And Mom would be super grumpy at her right now for trying to lie about something like this.

"Sorry," she repeated. "I just keep seeing… you know." She waggled her fingers a bit.

Weiss glanced down at Ruby's hands, eyes squinting in thought. "No, I don't, " she said. "What do you keep seeing?"

There was… there was no _way _she didn't know what Ruby meant, right? Either she was really dumb-which she wasn't, unless faunus were involved apparently-or she wanted Ruby to say it out loud.

Which was really mean! Right? Or maybe it would help her to say it out loud? That was something she'd seen in TV shows and movies before, therapists getting patients to say out loud what was wrong.

But she didn't need therapy! She was a huntress! She was tough!

Dad had tried getting her to go to psych-iatrist/ologist (whichever one it was), even gotten her all the way into the chair in one's office a couple years after they'd found out Mom wasn't coming home, but Ruby had blitzed away as soon as he'd let go of her hand. Talking to strangers about Mom was… no.

But this? This was bad, but it wasn't Mom .And she'd gotten through Mom, or at least gotten by, so she could handle this too, right?

But Weiss wasn't a stranger. She was a friend, and she cared, even though she tried to act like she didn't when people other than Ruby were around.

"Blood. On my hands," she finally murmured. She looked down at her hands as she said it, but the words didn't conjure the image. It was just her hands. Super scrubbed clean with medical-grade alcohol solution, white-though not nearly as pale as Weiss, medium length skinny fingers. Just hands.

"I'm sorry," Weiss whispered. "I should have been the one trying to stop the bleeding."

Ruby shook her head. The awful possibility that if Weiss had been the one doing it and she'd realized the victim was a faunus, she would have stopped ran through her mind, but she dismissed it before the thought had even fully formed. Weiss wouldn't do that. It didn't matter anyway. That wasn't the reason she'd insisted on doing it herself.

"It was my idea to go there."

"But-"

"It was my idea to go there, and I can handle it. I'm just as much a huntress as you are, Weiss."

"I know you are, Ruby. But you just… you're…"

"Just a kid?" Ruby guessed. It was an argument she was expecting, and it was a dumb one. She was only two years younger than the other freshmen here! Not even that, in some cases. And her birthday was in a couple months!

"I-no," Weiss recovered. "No, you're not _just_ anything. I'm sorry. I misspoke. I just meant you're… innocent?" She looked at Ruby as if unsure the word would land.

It didn't.

"Huh? Like I haven't committed any crimes? Have _you_?"

No way, right? With how much Weiss hated faunus for being criminals (whatever), there was no way she was one herself. Although… she wasn't really her own biggest fan a lot of the time, maybe that was the reason?… She had a weird thing going where she'd act all 'I'm awesome and so much better than you hahaha' and then if she was ever less than perfect she'd beat herself up-literally pinch herself so hard she almost drew blood-when she was alone.

'_Or around me, I guess.'_

Did that make Ruby special? Or did it just mean Weiss cared so little she was there that she'd forget and think she's alone?

No, Ruby had just noted that Weiss cared and was just bad at or didn't like to show it. She was asking if Ruby was okay now _because_ she cared.

Wait, what were they talking about?

"Not innocent like _that_, you dolt."

Oh, right.

"Innocent as in… I don't know. You know Grimm are evil and need to be stopped from hurting people, right?"

"Of course."

"Yeah. I just think you just haven't realized that _people_ hurt people just as much-or more-than Grimm. They can be pretty awful, just like that guy tonight _and _the people he was killing."

"Thinking about the White Fang?"

Weiss winced and looked away. "They're not the only ones."

"I know," Ruby said tiredly. "Or, like, I know that as, like, a concept." She waved her hands. "But people are supposed to be good! And we're supposed to protect them! What fairytale has _people_ as the bad guys when there are giant monsters of pure evil prowling around being all douchey and evil?!"

Weiss smiled. "Yeah. In a perfect world, you'd be right. But this isn't a fairytale, Ruby."

"I knowww… It's a fanfiction of an anime."

"What?"

"What?"

"What was… what did you say after 'I know'? I… I seem to have forgotten."

"I didn't say anything after 'I know'... I don't think…"

Ruby and Weiss frowned at each other for a moment.

"Okay. Well-so are you… do you think you'll take Officer Macklin's advice and talk to a counselor?" Weiss asked hesitantly.

"Ew, no! Wait, why? Do you think I should?"

Weiss tilted her head. "I think therapy could… help?"

Ruby frowned. No, talking to strangers about deep, personal thought stuff was gross. "Would _you_ do it?"

Weiss scoffed. "Never. I don't _need_ therapy. I'm perfectly fine." She blinked and her eyes went wide, darting to Ruby's. "But-but it does have its merits. It might be helpful for you."

"... Naaaaaaaaah."

Weiss' eyebrows scrunched up. "Okay," she said slowly. "Well… in that case, give me your hands." She held out her own.

"What? Why?"

"So you can't look at them," Weiss answered with a tiny smile.

"Oh. Um, is that the best way to deal with this?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "_I_ don't know. If you want somebody that _knows_ what they're doing with _this,_ then see a therapist."

"No!" Ruby squeaked.

"Then give me your hands!"

"Fine." Ruby placed her hands, which still held the remote, into Weiss'. Still that comfy-pillow cold. Weiss sandwiched Ruby's hands with hers and gave a reassuring rub with one of her thumbs.

"But I need to change the channel," Ruby complained-though she wasn't really complaining. This was nice.

Weiss sighed and loosened her grip so Ruby could flip the remote the right way and keep scrolling through the channels.

"Is there anything _you_ want to watch?" Ruby asked.

"Mmm… Not really."

"Don't watch much TV either, do you?" Ruby guessed. If Weiss hadn't seen a lot of movies, it stood to reason she hadn't seen many TV shows either.

Weiss shook her head. "Not really. Though I do like 'Discovering Remnant'."

"The nature documentary thing?" Ruby asked, wrinkling her nose.

"Yes, don't make that face! It's interesting. And beautiful."

"But it's so boriiiiiing!"

"_How_ is it boring? Have you _seen_ the Floating Isles of Mistral? Or the Lava Fields in Vacuo? Or the Infinite Maelstrom? Or-"

"Okay, I get it! There's cool stuff in it. Neat. There's still no people or plot or p… something else that starts with P!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yes, but those cool things in it are _real_, Ruby. You could go to them and see them and stand on top of them."

"Pfft. we can't afford to _travel_, are you kidding? Dad only gets a couple months off in the summer anyway, and he usually has to run training camps for young huntsmen for extra money during it."

"Well, you can afford it now."

"Huh? Yang and I haven't gotten paid for any hunts yet. And I thought the school took half of what we make while we enr-"

"Not you, dolt. _Me_."

"Oh. You'd do that?"

Weiss shrugged a little. "I've always wanted to travel. I figure after we graduate or during our breaks would be a great time to go see the world, and I-it… well, I'd be incredibly rude if I didn't invite my team with me."

"Wow, that'd be-"

"And I'd pay for everything," she quickly added.

"Yeah, I-wow. That would be super cool, Weiss." Ruby wasn't really sure what to say. 'Thank you' didn't really seem like it did the offer justice.

'_I'm gonna have to get _ten _of those earrings if she goes through with this.'_

A pleased smile spread across Weiss' face.

Ruby found the nature channel by total accident. It wasn't playing 'Discovering Remnant', but that was okay. It was one of those Grimm survival education shows meant to teach civilians about Grimm, how to avoid drawing them to you, and what to do if and when they did show up. It mostly just boiled down to 'stay calm and hide' and 'call for help', neither of which Ruby found reassuring or useful, but they were probably the kinds of things people without mega weapons, force fields, and superpowers should do.

"I do _not_ understand the people that leave the big cities," Weiss muttered at the screen. "They want to make their own village and just end up wandering off into the woods to die." She kept rubbing her thumb against the back of Ruby's hand as she spoke.

"I dunno. I think it could be a fun challenge. Like playing a survival game."

Weiss huffed a laugh. "I mean, sure. If it was a village full of Rubies you'd be fine. Any village of huntsmen would. But these people are just normal civilians. They have business going out in the wild."

Ruby hmmed. "I guess, yeah. But I can also understand wanting to get out of the big cities."

"What's wrong with the cities?"

"Nothing! It's just… I dunno. Vale City is great, but it's also really big and crowded. I can imagine that can be tiring."

Weiss frowned a little. "True."

"You don't like crowds, right?"

"Right."

"So it would be like that, but instead of not liking _standing_ in a crowd, they don't like _living_ in one."

Weiss pursed her lips. "I guess that makes sense…. Though if the options were 'stand in a crowd' or 'walk into a Beowolf and die', I think I'd just suck it up and deal with the crowd."

Ruby giggled at that. The image of Weiss getting beaten by a single Beowolf was laughable.

The image of the bleeding monkey faunus flashed in front of her eyes.

"Ahem! Yeah, but, uh… uh, maybe some people think they'll be okay."

"Well those people are stupid."

"Wei-eissss," Ruby chastised, her tone a light-hearted sing-song to force her emotional state away from… from _that_.

"Well they are!"

"Compared to you, I'm pretty sure everyone's stupid, Weiss. That doesn't mean you should _say_ that."

Weiss huffed and crossed her legs again, kicking the top foot once. "I'm not saying it _to_ them, though. Just you."

"... Yeah, that's true. I suppose that's… better?"

Weiss nodded once, affirmatively.

They watched the show for a little bit in silence. It was showing some footage from an airship of a pack of Beowolves driving a momma bear and her cubs out of their cave.

:(

Oh no, not just driving them out. The Beowolves were hunting them! One Evil Death Wolf ran at one of the two cubs and Momma Bear moved to block it. She clopped it on the head with a big paw, but the bone plating protected it from the claws and it scratched her with its own. Blood sprayed, and she-

Suddenly, Ruby was back in that horrible garage. Knife Jerk was in front of her, crouched over the body of the faunus. He pulled his weapon out with a spray of blood. She had expected a squelch or something when he'd done that, but it had been utterly silent save for the ragged inhale of the stabbed man.

She changed the channel.

Weiss glanced over at her and gave her hands a squeeze. "So!... Um… So, uh, what did you think of dinner?" she stammered.

Ruby smiled. It was pretty obvious what Weiss was doing, and it was kinda sweet. "It was great. But you already asked me that." She knew calling out Weiss on trying to distract was probably wrong, but she was pretty sure it would fluster her, and flustered Weiss was cute.

Sure enough, Weiss's eyes went wide and she started blinking super fast as her back went rigid. "Oh. Oh, right. Um, soooo what did you think of the statues?"

"They were awesome! I can't believe there are people out there that can make stuff that awesome with their _hands_."

Weiss smiled and nodded. "I thought the same. Talent like that makes me a little jealous."

"Oh please. You're just as good as they are at music!"

Weiss pursed her lips. "I'm really not, Ruby."

"Yuh-huh! I haven't heard you sing, but I bet it's awesome. And your piano playing is, like, concert pianist level awesome!"

A skeptical eyebrow crept up. "Ruby, have you ever even _heard_ a concert pianist before?"

"Uh, _yeah_. You!" Ruby grinned.

Weiss did that little half-eye roll and looked away. Smiling, Ruby shifted around a bit to get comfy and rested her head on Weiss' shoulder the way she did with Yang all the time. Weiss stiffened up reflexively, but she didn't move or push her away.

"You can breath, Weiss," Ruby said with a giggle.

The response was an ever so slight shake of Weiss' head. "I don't want to move my shoulder."

That was cute. "I'll be okay," Ruby reassured her. "I usually fall asleep on _Yang's _shoulder. That's basically a rollercoaster with how much she moves around."

"That's fair," Weiss said with a small laugh.

They stayed up half watching TV, mostly talking, for what felt like _ever_. It was kind of weird. _Weiss_ was the one pushing conversation and not letting too long of a silence stretch out. She clearly was not very skilled in the art of coming up with random things to talk about, so Ruby helped her out, of course. It was fun to talk to her, and it was infinitely better than the flashes of red Ruby was seeing when she went too long without being distracted.

She also sent a couple angry messages at Yang yelling at her for not answering her scroll.

A bit past midnight, Weiss rested her cheek over so lightly on top of Ruby's head. From the way her speech got mumbly and her response time slowed, Ruby realized she was starting to fall asleep.

"Have you ever wondered, like, if you dyed water a different color and then turned it into Dust, what color Dust it would be?" she asked.

"... Mmmm?"

"Like, if you died the water orange, would it turn into orange Dust? *_gasp!_* And if it's _orange_ Dust, would that mean it's _lava_ Dust? Could you turn water into lava?!"

"... I don't-" Weiss covered her mouth with the back of a hand as she yawned widely, with an adorable little high pitched squeak at the end of it "-... think it works that way, Ruby."

"I'm pretty sure it does, Weiss. I have Science on my side."

"...You're… a dolt."

Ruby giggled. "You wanna go to bed?" she asked. She really wanted to stay up and chat forever and ever, but Weiss was very clearly exhausted. Considering she wakes up at seven every morning like a crazy person, it made sense.

"Will you?" Weiss asked, a hint of a plead in her voice.

No. Not really. Ruby would be fine going to bed and lying down, but she very much doubted she'd be able to fall asleep.

"Sure. Let's go to sleep."

Weiss nodded appreciatively, her cheek rubbing against the top of Ruby's head and probably making her hair do funny things. Ruby got up first and pulled a sleepy-eyed Weiss to her feet.

When they walked into their dark bedroom, they were somewhere else. The store garage again, and the masked killer was back. He was standing victoriously on top of the truck, the truck bed piled high with bodies. The body on top was the monkey faunus, eyes simultaneously empty and glaring, accusatory, at Ruby.

Ruby froze, blinked, and squeezed Weiss' hand, and the image faded. The yellow light of street lamps softened to pale white moonlight through the window, crates of guns and drugs gave way to bunk beds and study desks. Where the killer and truck of dead people were just a bookshelf-dresser and the open blinds.

"Yehh meh-mer?" Weiss mumbled beside her.

"What was that?" Ruby asked, struggling very hard to fight back a giggle. Sleepy Weiss was adorable.

Weiss forced her eyes open wide in an attempt to jolt herself awake. "You okay?"

"Yeah! Sorry. Just trying to find the light switch."

"Noooo," Weiss protested softly. "No lights."

"Hehe. Okay. Come on, go to sleep, Princess."

Ruby led her partner to their bunk, and Weiss shuffled the last few feet on her own and slipped under her covers, somehow still managing to be graceful while ninety-five percent asleep.

She laid her head down on her pillows with a contented sigh. "You too," she mumbled into her pillow. "Go to sheep."

"Sheep?" Ruby teased, giving Weiss' shoulder a little shake. "What sheep? You got sheep?"

"Hnnnngh!" Weiss whined weakly. "Goff sheh menshter," she said, her face now fully buried in her pillows.

"I'm sorry, what was that? My Sleepy Silliness is a bit rusty."

"..."

"Weiss?"

"..."

Ruby poked Weiss' shoulder.

"..."

'_Wow, she went out like a light.'_

Ruby got ready for bed. Brushed teeth, PJs on, clothes in… hamper? These were fancy Weiss gift clothes, were they supposed to go in the hamper with her normal pleb clothes? Probably not. Instead, she folded them as neatly as she could and placed them on the top of her dresser. She'd ask Weiss what she should do with them in the morning.

It took all of ten seconds lying in bed staring at the ceiling in the dark for her to come to the conclusion that she still wasn't tired enough to fall asleep. She probably _would_, eventually, but it would take time. Time in which she'd have nothing to do but think.

And she really didn't want to think right now.

She got out her scroll and played some Grimm Crush, muting it to make sure she wouldn't wake up Weiss, of course. The mind-numbing match-three game was good for what she needed-a distraction.

A few minutes of that worked, until she noticed that the index finger she was swiping with was covered in blood.

'_No, it's not, Ruby. Relax. Be tough. You're a huntress.'_

"... Gah!"

She grabbed her pillows, hugging them to her body, and hopped off her bunk. Her landing made a dull thud, and behind her Weiss stirred. She went still, head almost one-eightied like an owl, checking to see if she'd woken her partner up.

…. No, she was good.

She crossed the room and tossed her pillows up onto Yang's bed, then climbed in herself. Now she had double the pillows, and half of them smelled like Yang's cinnamon shampoo, which made her feel better. Like Yang was here, so she was safe.

Physical tiredness was starting to set in. There was a sharp pain behind her eyes now, but it didn't really get any better when she closed them. And her brain was still firing at a billion roses per hour, threatening to fill her vision with images from tonight. At least when her eyes were open there was something to look at to override those images, making them easier to push aside than they were when her eyes were closed.

She should just focus on something else. Like other, happier memories from today!

Shopping with Weiss had been so much fun! And Ruby actually looked pretty good in fancy clothes! Weiss had said so, and she's an expert. And Yang had thought she looked good, and she didn't even _like_ fancy people clothes. She preferred short shorts and crop tops to dress pants and button downs.

What else was there? There was… well, there was that whole 'Weiss hates all faunooses' thing, but… like, that obviously wasn't a good memory, but was it a bad one? It mostly just didn't make any sense. Hopefully Ruby could get Weiss to see she was being silly, and that there are lots of nice fauni out there.

And dinner! Dinner was… well it was awkward and tense 'cause Weiss and Blake were, like, fighting or whatever, but the food was awesome and the restaurant was neat, and some of the conversation had been really fun! She still didn't know what the birds and the bees meant though…

And the statue gardens were SO awesome! Painting and photography had never really enraptured Ruby, especially landscapes and abstracty weird stuff, but _statues_ of people and animals and _gods_? That she could walk around and look at and felt like they were actually here in the world? _That_ was pretty sweet.

Then…

Then blood.

Time for more Grimm Crush.

She was far enough away from Weiss that she felt safe turning the volume up a bit, and the innocent blips and plops and squacks of the cartoony Grimm heads as she matched them up and made them pop were another welcome sensory distraction.

Now it was one in the morning and Yang still wasn't h-

"Nah nah nah nah nah na-ah," came the singing voice of Ruby's dumb, stupid, non-scroll answering sister. There was a soft electronic click from the lock, and the door opened with a whoosh. Yang jumped in dramatically and pointed finger guns at nobody in particular.

"And live while we're young!" she finished, kinda loudly. There was a brief moment of quiet as Yang squinted around the dark room. "... Oh. I think they're asleep."

Blake came in behind her, wobbling a little bit as she walked. "It _is_ one in the morning, and Weiss is _Weiss_ and Ruby's bedtime is probably eight or something." She giggled lightly and clutched Yang's elbow to steady herself before slowly making her way to her bed.

"That's rude," Ruby scolded her.

Blake let out a light shriek and jumped back, landing in Yang's arms like that one dog did in that cartoon.

Yang snorted out a brief laugh. "You got the spooks there, Blakey-Blake."

Flustered, Blake stumbled to the floor. "I just-bleck-wasn't expecting someone in your bed. Ugggh, my head." She rested on the floor on her knees and tucked her head down between them, placing her hands on top of it and interlacing her fingers. You know, in case a bomb was about to go off or something.

Yang let out a little gasp. "Is that a _Rubles_ in my bed?" She bounded up and stood on the edge of Blake's bed and grabbed onto the edge of her bunk. Ruby instinctively scooted closer to her so their faces were close together.

"Well, hey there, Peanut," Yang smiled. "I'm sorry, did we wake you?"

Ruby shook her head.

"Well, that's good." She reached over and rubbed Ruby's cheek with a finger. "Whatchu doin' over here?"

Ruby hummed an 'I don't know.' "Why do you suck so much?" she pouted.

"Whaaa?" Yang gasped. "Why am I suck?"

"Look at your scroll."

With a light frown, Yang pulled her scroll out of her back pocket, pulled it open, and her eyes went wide. "Thirteen missed calls, six new messages… 'Answer your scroll', 'Yang, you suck', 'Stupidhead', 'I needed your help, what the heck', 'Dad told you to always answer your scroll when I'm calling', 'poop emoji', 'Yang-exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, ex-' that's a lot of exclamation points."

"Yeah, well you're a lot of dumb," Ruby griped, putting on her best grumpy face.

For whatever reason, her grumpy face made Yang _smile_. "No arguments here, Sis. So, what's up? What was so urgent it warranted thirteen calls and-" she check her scroll again "-… _nine_ exclamation points?"

"I-"

She stopped. Did she really want to talk about this right now? She was ninety-five percent sure she just wanted to forget about it.

"Weiss and I ran into some trouble," she hedged.

Yang's eyebrows immediately furrowed in concern. "What kind of trouble?" she asked, her voice with a hard edge now.

There she was. Protective Mama Bear Yang. And she was better at punching Beowolves than the mama bear on TV had been.

"It's… can I tell you tomorrow? I just want cuddles and sleeps. I-I can stay here tonight, right?" They did it all the time before, but maybe being in school and in a dorm changed the rules?

"Of course, silly," Yang said. "You don't need to ask. One condition, though."

"What?"

"You have to leave all these extra pillows with me forever and ever."

"Nooooooo."

She smiled and kissed Ruby on the forehead. "Let me go get some P-Jiggles on. Be right back."

"Mkay."

Yang hopped to the floor and looked down at her partner, who was still rolled up on the floor taking cover from a bomb. "You need some help getting to bed, lightweight?"

"No!" Blake protested. She weakly swiped a hand out to try to smack Yang's ankle, but Yang stepped back _juuuuust_ out of reach. She then gagged and brought her hand back on top of her head. "Yes please," she said in a tiny voice.

Yang laughed lightly and bent down to gently pick her partner up, then laid her down in bed. "Gimme da feets," she said. Ruby couldn't see what was going on, but she heard the light thuds of shoes hitting the floor.

"Night, pardner," Yang said. "You'll feel better in the morning… kinda."

"I'm with Ruby… you suck."

Yang laughed it off. "Ya'll are a buncha bullies," she quipped as she headed into the bathroom.

Well at least Blake was getting along with Yang really well.

"How was clubbing?" Ruby asked, scooting a little bit closer to the edge of the bed so she could hear Blake's response from below.

"It was fun," Blake replied, even though her voice sounded strained. "I just like giving Yang a hard time."

"Ha! You're telling me."

"Heh. But yeah, it was great. Dancing was fun. I think the- ...'scuse me-think the drinking was a mistake, though."

"Are you old enough to drink?"

"_Technically_, no. But the bartender didn't care. He was too busy staring at Yang's boobs."

Ruby snorted. "Darn her and her secret weapons."

Now Blake snorted. "Not very secret."

"Secrets?" Yang whispered loudly, announcing her return to the room. "What secrets? They're not about me, are they?"

"They're _your_ secrets, actually," Blake said. Ruby could just barely see Blake's foot lightly swing out from her bed to tap Yang on the thigh.

"I don't have secrets!" Yang protested.

"Yes, you do. _Big _ones. Two of them, to be exact."

Yang's eyes narrowed, though it was barely visible in the moonlit dark. "This is a joke I'm not getting, isn't it?"

"Wow, that sounds _so_ unlike you," Blake teased.

Yang pointed a finger at where Blake's head probably was. "I _will _bite you."

"You keep saying that, but it's not that scary when there's never any follow through."

Yang blinked. "I-I'll do it!"

Blake let out a little giggle and pushed Yang back with a toe. "Empty threats."

"I… you're just drunk, Blake. Sleep it off. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Peanut to crush."

Blake let out a barely audible "Hmph" while Ruby squeaked.

"Noooo, don't crush me, Yang! I'm an innocent peanut!"

Yang climbed up the ladder dramatically. "That's too bad, 'cause you're gettin' the crush."

"Noooo! This is injustice! Somebody save me from the crush!"

Yang settled in behind Ruby, folding on arm under the mass of pillows under Ruby's head and wrapping the other around her, pulling her close. Ruby wiggled a bit to snuggle into her sister, who was, as always, extra warm. Warm and safe, where no crazy knife dudes could get her.

Yang gave her squeeze. "Krrrck! Got you."

"Ack! I am swain! Aaaaah."

Yang made 'nom nom nom' noises and pretended to eat Ruby's head.

"Ah, my brain! I _knew_ you were a zombie!"

"Darn, I've been found out. Good thing you'll soon be one too, so no witnesses!"

Ruby reached back and tried to give Yang's rib cage a tickle. Fruitless, of course. Yang was immune to the power of tickles.

"Oh, you want to go _there_?" Yang fake-growled. She placed her fingertips on Ruby's ribs and pressed down juuuust a little.

"No, please!" Ruby squeaked. "I'm so tired."

Yang huffed out a breathy laugh and wrapped arm back around Ruby, pulling her even closer and nuzzling her hair.

"You have fun dancing tonight?" Ruby asked.

"Mhm! Lots. Blake's a great dancer."

"*_Hic!*_" Blake added from below.

"That figures," Ruby smiled. "You think _all_ ninjas are good dancers?"

"Prolly," Yang answered. "Oh! Speaking of ninjas, there was some creepy dude that followed us from the club-"

"Whaaa?"

"Yeah! He got on the bus after us and everything. I wanted to go punch him in the face, but Blake convinced me not to. Instead, we gave him the slip like total ninjas. It was sweet."

"I have a hard time seeing you being sneaky," Ruby teased.

"Don't make me eat your brains again. You're already in dire need of more."

"Hey!"

Blake mumbled something below them.

"What was that, Blake?" Ruby asked.

"She almost gave us away _three times_ 'cause she was laughing like an idiot."

Yang huffed indignantly. "Hey, it was _funny_. Did you see his face? He was so confused! He had _no_ idea where we went."

"That's kinda how being sneaky works, Yang," Blake said in response.

"I-you… go to sleep! Both of you! Buncha clowns. You're gonna wake up Weiss!"

"You're being louder than we are!" Blake protested at the same time as Ruby shook her head.

"She's _out_. Pretty sure an Ember Celica blast next to her face wouldn't wake her up."

"You knock her out or something?" Yang asked.

"What?! No!"

"I'm just sayin', she was being kinda a butt. It would be understandable."

"Nooo, she's tired because she was being _not _a butt. She stayed up past midnight just to keep me company 'cause she's sweet."

"Oh. Huh. Well that's nice. Although midnight is weaksauce."

"She wakes up at seven every day."

"... True. Are we _certain _she's not crazy?"

"She doesn't have any cats."

"Hmmm."

Blake piped up again from below, "Hey! Having a cat doesn't make you crazy. Cats are great."

"Oh wonderful," Yang drawled. "_My_ partner's the cat lady."

"I-I'm not a cat lady!"

"You'd make a good one, though," Ruby said. "Your bow kinda makes it look like you have cat ears."

"N-no it doesn't!"

"Awwww, Blake's all flustered again," Yang teased.

"No I'm-go to sleep!"

"Can you three please shut up?" Weiss groaned from across the room. "You've all told each other to go to sleep multiple times and you're _still_ talking."

"Weiss!" Ruby squealed. "I'm so sorry! We'll be quiet!"

"Please do."

"Wow, way to go, Blake," Yang joked.

Blake didn't offer a response, and after a moment of silence it was clear she wasn't going to give one.

'_Oh, right. Weiss is awake.'_

How long was this fight going to go on?

Whatever. Something to deal with in the morning.

"Good night, Team RWBY," she said to the room.

Weiss mumbled something that trailed off, like she was falling asleep halfway through the whatever she was saying.

"Good night, Ruby," Yang said, scooting herself even closer, to the point she was almost squishing Ruby into the bed.

It felt nice. Plus, Ruby knew Yang liked super close cuddles.

When Ruby finally drifted off, she dreamed of sushi and dragons and Weiss with a monkey tail, and the whole world was red. Not like how it was when she was in Rose form.

A deeper, darker red.

She wasn't scared, though. Even in her weird, wild dream state, she still knew Yang was close. There was no reason to be scared.

* * *

**Kind of a short chapter, but this felt like a good place to stop. Might be an interlude chapter next, if there is a next chapter. There might not be. I might be getting evicted cuz I can't pay rent. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen! :**

**As always, thank you guys for reading and I hope you enjoyed that chapter!**


	22. Thaw 2-X

**So I know this was a really fast turnaround time, but I really freaking liked writing this chapter. I'm really happy with everything I was able to do here. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Make sure to get the flake to Undercover Ops," Mack called out to the CSU guy currently taking pictures of the drugs on the table nearby.

"Yes sir."

He went back to reading the witness statement Rookie Rio had gotten from the cute huntress girls.

'_No. Not cute. Don't think that.'_

Everything in Rio's statement matched up with what they'd said to him. Guy in a hoodie, light eyes, knife, thugs had guns, one got away. There were other details that weren't really relevant, so Mack flipped the notebook closed and handed it back to Rio with a nod.

"Canvass pick anyone up?" he asked.

Rio shook her head. "Did you expect it to? We can never catch this guy."

"Not Jackstabby. The Junior thug. He'd be the first one of Junior's men to survive one of these attacks, save those freaky twins. If we can grab him before he gets back to Junior, we might be able to get some details about the attack that the huntress girls didn't know."

Rio nodded slowly, eyes unfocused. Her 'I'm about to ask a question' face.

A second of silence passed.

"Sir-"

"What is it?"

"The, uh, huntress girls. Are-are we doing any follow up with the school or anything?"

Mack's eyebrow popped up. "Like what?"

Rio seemed to be confused by the question. "Like telling the headmaster that they need to keep kids out of the line of fire. Why are there two teenagers that looked like they were out on a date in a knife-and-gunfight in a garage? They have no business being here!"

"Mmph," Mack grunted.

Being the annoyingly insistent rookie that she was, Rio stood waiting for a real answer instead of accepting Mack's gruff response as one.

"Seemed like they came out okay to me," he finally replied.

Rio scoffed. "Did you see the brunette? She was shaking. Sh-they're kids. A child shouldn't be anywhere close to shit like this." She gestured widely at the guns, drugs, and bodies in the garage. "And this-you recognized her, right?"

"Yeah."

"She's the girl that interrupted Torchwick's Dust robbery spree."

"Yeah."

"Children shouldn't be throwing themselves at armed gangsters, Cap!"

"They're not just children," Mack corrected. "They're child super soldiers."

"Didn't look super to me," Rio griped. "What if they'd gotten shot? Are we supposed to just be okay with carting teenage girls out of here in body bags because they got themselves killed?"

"You know they've got that aura shit, right?" Mack asked.

"Is it enough to stop bullets?" Rio asked sarcastically, like she was assuming the answer was 'no'.

Mack scoffed. "You weren't there for that joint huntsman-T.R.T. hit on Torchwick's old nest, were you?"

A frown creased Rio's face. "No, why?"

Mack made his gaze unfocus dramatically. "I watched one of those crazy jackholes take a grenade to the face and shrug it off like it was a mildly stinky fart."

Rio blinked. "... What?"

"Yeah. They're insane. And there are insane, superpowered fuckers on the other side, too. Like Torchwick's wife, or those True freakshows, or Jackstabby over here." He jerked a thumb toward the bodies that were now being zipped up in heavy black bags.

"That name's never gonna catch on," the rookie muttered.

"You want to be on traffic duty next week?"

"Jackstabby it is."

Mack huffed in humor. "But yeah. We can't do much against jackholes with personal forcefields and superpowers. We need jackholes of our own."

Rio rolled her eyes at Mack's word choice, which-yeah, it was fair. He'd never been the most eloquent guy. "But teenage girls? Why would they even consider running into a gunfight alone and unarmed?"

"Oh, they're a bunch of psychopaths with hero complexes, all of them," Mack answered. "Think of them like drug dogs-they're great at what they do, and they do something we can't do ourselves, but we need to keep our hand on the leash."

The ME's bustled past them, breaking them apart for a few seconds with their gurneys of dead. Officers were quickly moving into the vacated space to get some extra pictures of the blood pools. Mack wasn't sure why; it was pretty clear what had happened here. He wouldn't fault them for going through the motions, though.

"Seems… off," Rio said as she stepped back to Mack's side.

"What?"

Rio waved a hand. "The leash thing."

"Oh." Mack shrugged.

The reality was that everything was going to shit. For whatever reason, more and more people were popping up with 'aura' and 'semblances', and the bad guys the police were having to deal with were getting further and further beyond their means and capabilities. A few self professed heroes coming in to slice and dice the tougher to crack nuts was fine with Mack. It made his job easier-or at least, it brought it down from 'impossible' to just 'hard, but a few drinks will keep you sane'.

"So… leash?" Rio asked.

"Huh?"

"Should we talk to the headmaster? Tell him to, I dunno, remind his students to be careful and not play hero out in the mean streets of Vale? They should keep to their monster-slaying unless we call for them, don't you think?"

Monster-slaying. Grimm. Yeesh. If Mack was ever jealous of the abilities of huntsmen, the knowledge that he'd be expected to use those powers to go fight those freaky-ass monsters knocked it right out of him.

"Maybe, yeah. I'll talk to the Big C tomorrow."

Rio nodded.

Good, at least that was over.

"Bison!" Mack called out.

"Sup?" came an answering shout from behind him.

Mack turned around. Bison was bagging all the magazines from the rifles in the crates, the long horns on the side of his head yellow-orange in the colored lighting. Rifles that were definitely much higher in firepower than anything Junior had brought in before. A reaction to this killer, or was this indicative of something more? Junior was supposed to be a tame one.

Mack would need to speak to Torchwick about this soon.

"You good with managing this? I'm heading out. Shift ended half an hour ago and I'm not needed here."

"Sure," Bison replied. He was one of the senior officers in Precinct Three, the Dancetown Precinct, one of the senior 'Clubbies' as they were called by the other precincts. He'd handled crime scene management plenty of times.

"Thanks. And Rio-" he clapped a hand on the rookie's shoulder and gave a dramatic pause "-stop bullying child heroes."

"I'm not-!"

"Ah ah ah!" Mack interrupted her. He pointed at the old school watch on his wrist. "Off the clock! I no longer care." He gave her a purposefully annoying smirk and walked away.

Outside, the squad cars and ambulances arranged around the storefront had both blocked traffic and attracted a crowd. The bright flashing lights of the vehicles illuminated curious bystanders, couples and families that had been out enjoying their Saturday nights.

And reporters.

Fucking reporters.

Sighing in resignation, Mack ducked under the crime scene tape cordoning off the area around the store and approached the mass of people held back by the hard-light barriers Mack had ordered to be put up.

A thousand different voices all clamored for his attention.

"Officer!"

"Officer!"

"Officer!"

"Officer Macklin!"

Mack searched the crowd for the voice that had called his name, his eyes eventually settling on Nicki Nale. His favorite reporter, if he had to pick one. He'd met her a few years ago, when she'd been an enthusiastic highschooler that wanted to interview a cop for her journalism class. He'd volunteered because she was so damn cute. Schoolgirl skirt, glasses, blond ponyta-

'_Stop.'_

It was wrong as hell to think these kinds of things, but it was even worse to think them with the gi-_woman_ standing right in front of him.

Nicki noticed that he'd focused in on her, and flashed a pleased smile as she pushed her way up to the barrier. She shoved a recording device towards him, not a mic, so she didn't have a cameraman with her. There _were_ cameras here, a few rows behind the gaggle of reporters in front of Mack, but evidently none of them were hers.

Not a big enough fish yet.

"Officer Macklin, can you give us any information about what happened here tonight?"

Mack took a deep breath. "Earlier this evening, shots were heard fired in the store behind me. It was an attack by the same individual that is responsible for the other recent deaths of gang members in the Dancetown District. He left five dead bodies and one man in critical condition, who is now receiving medical care. He was wearing a mask, a dark hooded sweater, and dark jeans, and we know from a previous sighting that he has grey hair and light skin and eyes. If anybody sees anybody matching this description, please get away and call the police."

"How do you know it's the same attacker?" Nicki pressed.

"Eyewitness accounts," Mack answered diplomatically. He didn't want to expl-

"What eyewitnesses?"

Damn.

"A pair of huntresses-in-training from Beacon Academy were in the area and heard the gunshots from the gang members fighting back. They entered the fight and tried to subdue both parties. They managed to get Ja-the killer to run away, gave one of the gang members a chance to escape, and kept the man that's currently in critical condition alive long enough for the paramedics to get here." He waved his hand and cut off the next question he knew was coming. "In the interest of their privacy, I will not be disclosing the names of these girls-"

"Was one of them Weiss Schnee?" one of the other reporters, one whose face Mack recognized but couldn't think of a name to go with it, blurted. "A girl matching her description was spotted leaving the scene, and she recently started at Beacon."

Mack popped a knuckle. "Like I said, I will not be naming the huntresses that were here, and-"

"Why did they let not one, but two criminals escape?" another nameless voice asked.

What the hell?

"They weren't entirely prepared for the situation and weren't in a position to detain or pursue, nor is it their job. They'd been out on a date, they didn't have their weapons with them, and they were good samaritans anyway. They chose to keep the dyi-"

"Who's Weiss Schnee dating?!"

Shit.

"I don't-I misspoke. 'Date' was just a term that one of my fellow officers used and it stuck in my head. It wasn't a date. I mean, mayb-my fellow officer just used that term because they were both dressed up nicely." Very nicely. "I'm _also_ not confirming with this statement that one of the girls was Weiss Schnee."

"Are you denying it?"

"I'm not commenting one way or the other. Do any of you have any _relevant _questions?"

Nicki spoke up again. "This is the sixth time in eighteen days that this individual has managed to commit murder and evade police capture. Is this perhaps because the police aren't devoting their full effort to arresting him because he's getting rid of criminal elements you haven't been able to?"

Mack did his absolute best to glare a hole through Nicki's head, but she didn't seem to care.

The truth was Mack very much wanted to catch this guy. He was making life difficult for Torchwick, which was bad. Usually Torchwick policed his own and kept the criminal underbelly of Vale City from being too disruptive, but if he got pissed… Well, the last time he'd been pissed was after the joint attack on his home. The good guys had failed to capture him, and twenty-three cops had paid for that failure with their lives in the following couple of weeks.

Mack had been able to convince Torchwick he hadn't known about the attack, which had been a lie. He'd been hoping the huntsmen would be successful and get rid of Torchwick so Mack didn't have to worry about the blackmail the crimelord had over him any longer. But alas, no dice.

"Absolutely not," he declared indignantly. "This man is a murderer, regardless of the occupation of the people he's killing. He is a criminal and VPD is doing everything it can to bring him to justice."

"Then why is he still out there?" someone asked.

"Because he's strong, fast, and the people he targets are people that are making a point of avoiding police. Our response times aren't fast enough to catch him in the act."

"But little girls out on a date are?"

"Coincidence is a hell of a thing," Mack sneered back. "Alright, that's it. No more questions."

He headed back from the barrier as the zoo of degenerates shouted more questions at his back. He gave a wave to the driver in the ME's van as they pulled away, then got in his own car.

Time to go home.

It was a decent drive back to his place on the north side of the city, the middle-class income apartment he had a somewhat recent upgrade he acquired with his promotion to captain of Precinct Three. Nothing special, but it was home, empty as it was nowadays. It was also a lot harder to pay for now that his wife was gone and her accountant's salary with her, and Mack's savings were slowly dwindling away to make the rent. But he couldn't go back to showering under a whole in the wall and having to fight cockroaches to reach his breakfast cereal.

He'd need to figure something out soon.

He climbed up the three flights of stairs to his fourth floor room. The top floor, thankfully. There was a family with three kids living below him, and if they'd been positioned the other way around, he might have gone insane by now. The downside of carrying groceries up three flights of stairs was… well, it was fine. He'd lost his physique from his rookie days, gotten a bit of the 'cop that eats donuts' belly over the years even though he hadn't touched a donut since college, but whatever.

He got to his door and bit back a groan. The lock was jimmied and left askew at a fifteen degree angle, a quirk that was Torchwick's unintentional calling card every time he visited.

Mack wasn't in the mindset to deal with this right now. Though he didn't really have a choice. The crimelord was in his home.

He pushed open the door.

"You know, Torchwick, you _could_ just call," he said out loud into the darkness. He flipped the lights on then and his eyes settled on Torchwick with his stupid bowler hat and his cane-that-was-also-a-gun sitting in one of the chairs in the living room, the one by the nightstand with the reading lamp.

"Damn it, Macklin!" Torchwick whined. "I was gonna do the whole dramatic 'click on the lamp and spook you' thing!"

"Tough."

"How'd you know I was here?"

"You use too much shampoo," Mack lied. It wouldn't do to tip Roman off about his little habit.

"Do I?" Roman grabbed a few locks of his stupid-looking hair and gave them a sniff. "Shit."

Usually Mack dropped his badge and service weapon on the counter by the door when he came in, but he kept them on him now. Not that they'd do much good here-he knew from personal experience that Roman had that aura bullcrap. Probably not enough for him to shrug off a grenade to the face, but it had been enough to stop Mack's two shots to his chest the first time he broke in to "just talk", and that would be enough time for him to make use of that Dust powered canon of a cane he had propped between his knees.

Make headed into the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge. "What do you want, Roman? I've had a long day."

"So I've heard. How's the wife?"

Crass. An unnecessary, manipulative attempt to put Mack on his heels, even though he already pretty much owned Mack. Mack was fairly certain Torchwick just enjoyed thinking of himself as a manipulative mastermind. Granted, he evidently was one from the fact that he was the crimelord of Vale, but it was wildly unnecessary here. Just ego stroking at this point.

"Still divorced." His wife hadn't been all too pleased when she'd found out about his… vice. Torchwick had informed Mack of the dirt he had, and being the proud, stubborn man he was, Mack had refused to capitulate. So Torchwick had given him a small taste of what could happen by somehow informing Anabelle of the contents of the blackmail. Mack had come home one day to an empty apartment, his wife's clothes and personal belongings gone. He didn't even know what happened or why until she finally answered his eight thousandth call three weeks later.

From then on Mack had no delusions that Torchwick was bluffing.

He wanted to hate Torchwick for taking his wife from him, but he knew it was just as much or more the fault of his depraved sickness.

Besides, there were plenty of other reasons to hate Torchwick anyway.

"Awww, what a shame," Torchwick drawled. "I had such high hopes for you two! It could have made an adorable love story. Gruff cop that throws himself into his work all day turns out to be a pedophile, Wife leaves in disgust, cop works to change and in time Wife comes to fall in love with the man again despite his faults. It would be so-"

"What do you _want_, Torchwick?" Mack growled. To add a bit of panache, he popped the the cap of his beer off with his thumb on the word 'want'.

Torchwick smirked obnoxiously. "Well that was pretty badass. How do you do that? I've been trying to get that trick down for _years_."

"Finger strength."

"Damn. The one thing I lack."

"Other than a moral center?"

Torchwick raised an eyebrow. "Careful there, Officer PedoBear. The kettle isn't always nice enough to not tell the world how black the pot is."

Mack's grip tightened on his bottle, and he had to consciously remind himself to not break the glass. He'd done it before. Cut up his hand pretty good in the process. That had been hard to explain away at work.

"Anyway," Torchwick said flippantly, "Junior got a call from one of his boys that managed to survive the attack. That's new."

"Yeah," was all Mack could think to say.

"But the guy never made it back. Said he was running to Josey's Lounge but never showed. Your boys in yellow pick him up?"

Mack shook his head. "Not last I heard."

"Hmph. How'd he get out? According to Junior, the guy didn't sound very coherent on the scroll, and Junior relating someone _else's _incoherent information is, well… I left that conversation very confused."

:Mack popped a knuckle. He _hated_ being under Torchwick's thumb like this. "A couple of huntress girls were nearby and heard the shots. Ran in and chased Jackstabby out. Let that one guy escape and kept another from bleeding out 'til we could rush him to the ER." He volunteered that last bit of information since Torchwick would find out from the news tomorrow anyway, and Mack didn't need to get on his bad side by withholding information.

"Jackstabby?" Torchwick asked with a laugh. "I like it."

'_Well there's no way I can use that now," _Mack thought to himself bitterly.

"This survivor, where was he taken?"

'_Uh-oh.'_

"Vale General, I assume. Not sure." He tried to sound as unconfident in his answer as possible so that Torchwick wouldn't treat it as actionable info, even though it was true. "He won't do you much good right now, though. He's probably in surgery for hours and then he'll need to be monitored to make sure he's stabilized."

'_And then he's going into police custody,.'_

"Oh, he could help. I have some friends that can do some fun shit with memories."

Mack suppressed a shiver. That would be the True. Those freaky Witches of Suburbia had all sorts of creepy, mind-fucky super powers.

"He's in a public hospital right now," Mack stressed. Torchwick wouldn't attack a hospital, would he? He was supposed to make _less_ waves than other crime bosses, not more.

Torchwick just shrugged. "Sounds like fun. And these huntresses, who were they?"

No. This was a line Mack couldn't cross. Torchwick wanted their names so that he could grab them and do creepy semblance crap to them if he couldn't get his hands on the guy in the hospital, and there was no way Burt Macklin would be responsible for that shit happening to a couple of innocent child heroines.

"Don't remember their names. I only got 'em once."

Close enough to the truth that it should be believable.

"I'm gonna need more than that, Officer Pedo."

There it was again. That snide reminder of what was at stake, of what Torchwick held over his head.

"I honestly don't remember their names," Mack lied, "but I'll see about getting them tomorrow morning."

"Mm…" Torchwick spun his cane between his hands. Once. Twice. "Alright. Shift gears with me." He mimed gear shifting on a stick shift with his cane and made a noise like a kid would. "First, Marcus Black is getting back in town soon-"

"_What?"_

"And I'd be _very_ appreciative if he wasn't met with any undo police attention."

"I-y-you know I can't promise that. The response to Black being active again goes way beyond any single gonna have every precinct on high alert-maybe even call in the military."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll do your best," Torchwick sing-songed as he inspected his nails. "'Cause if you do-ooon't…" He looked pointedly at the picture of Mack and Annabelle on their honeymoon that say on the table beside him.

Mack gritted his teeth and popped another knuckle.

"Why the hell are you bringing the likes of _Black_ into the city?"

Torchwick raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think _I'm _the one that hired him?"

"Then who? Junior? No. The Eastside Kings? The True?"

No answer was coming. Torchwick waved a dismissive hand at him. "On to other matters: the new Paladin mechs, know anything about 'em?"

"What? Mechs?"

Roman rolled his eyes. "Honestly, how could you pigs be _so _uninformed. You'll probably be getting briefed on them soon. Long story short, the Atlesian military developed a new mech. The weapons systems for the mechs were imported from Winchester Arms."

"Okay…" Mack didn't like where this is going.

"And Carson Winchester recently flew to Atlas and talked to Jacques Schnee."

'_Schnee.'_

Mack's mind immediately went to the gorgeous girl he'd met earlier that night. That pale skin, those piercing blue eyes, that petite build that made hi-

'_Stop.'_

"Okay…" he said again.

"So I need two things!" Torchwick jumped up out of the chair as he said it, and the sudden movement made Mack's hand instinctively jerk towards his gun. Torchwick noticed and just smirked. "I need A: to know what kind of deal our Councilman of Business made with Atlas' Councilman of Business, because I just like to stay informed, ya know? And two: I need a list of employees for the Winchester factory on King's Road."

"What? How am I supposed to get th-"

Well, employment records would be easy to obtain with his position. But the other thing?

"You want me to help you break in to the business of the richest man in Vale? The guy that's funded eighty percent of the departments new arms and armor in the past decade?"

Torchwick blinked. "Uh, yeah."

"He's got more cops in his pocket than you do!"

Another nonchalant shrug. "I'm not _asking_ those cops. I'm asking you."

'_One of the cops in _my _pocket,'_ was left unsaid, yet deafeningly loud.

Mack popped another knuckle.

"Fine. I'll see what I can do. But how am I supposed to get details on a deal between private companies?"

Torchwick shrugged. "You coppoes might be told what's going on soon when they import prototypes. Maybe not. You're not the only one I've got on that particular endeavor. But if you get me an answer, there'll be something in it for you." He rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers. Money.

What Mack _really_ wanted was for Torchwick to fork over his evidence of Mack's… thing. But that would never happen. Torchwick would never give up having a police captain in his back pocket.

Mack looked around at the apartment that he was struggling to afford. His kitchen, his couch that he had shared many steamy nights with Anabelle on, the bed they'd spent even more nights on together, steamy and not-and he couldn't decide which memory was his favorite.

Memories that would have to be abandoned if he didn't find away out of this financial hole.

"How much?"

Torchwick smiled widely.

* * *

The next morning Mack came in with coffee for himself and the other four officers in the precinct on a Sunday morning. It was something he liked to do himself instead of having the rookies do it, as was tradition. It made him the cool boss, but also, more importantly, gave him an excuse to be a little late. If he came in fifteen minutes late and said the line at the coffee shop drive through took fifteen minutes to get through when it really only took five, that meant he could sleep in for an extra ten minutes.

"Mornin', Cap," the officer standing up at the crimewatch board greeted Mack as he handed the man his latte.

"Mornin', Diaz. News?"

Diaz nodded grimly. "The bad kind, Mack. Marcus Black was spotted arriving in the southern transit hub four hours ago."

There was a picture on the board of the man himself exiting a train, a hat over his grey hair and casting a shadow over his salt-and-pepper stubbled face. He looked like an abnormally fit suburban dad, but he was one of the most dangerous men in Remnant. The last two captains of this precinct died at his hands, coincidentally.

'_That was fast.'_

"Damn. That's, uh. Yeah, that's the bad kind of news."

Diaz snorted a light laugh.

"Security didn't engage, right?"

"No. They followed the procedures that the Councilman of War and Peace issued for dealing with Black. Back off, don't let him know you ID'ed him, follow him."

"Lost him?"

"Of course."

"Damn. Do we know where he came from?"

Rio and Dukes walked up behind them then, and Mack handed them their coffees.

"Councilman Barnes is reaching out to the villages on the southern transit line, trying to figure out when he got on. His last known activity was fourteen months ago in Vacuo."

Vacuo. It was a wildland over there, Mack knew. Not as seedy and criminal as Mistral, which was worse than Vale by a mile, but more dangerous in some ways. Feral animals, Grimm, independent villages and tribes with a penchant fighting each other. It was different than Mistral and Vale because you didn't really need to worry about getting stabbed in the back. People in Vacuo were pretty honest when they wanted to stab you in the front.

'_Wonder what kind of work an assassin found there.'_

"Can I get the reports of what he did over there on my desk?"

Dukes nodded. "Barnes said he was expecting to get it within the hour and that he'd be sending copies to the captains."

Mack nodded slowly. He had no intention of helping Torchwick keep Black hidden. This was a monster that needed to be put down, regardless of the cost for Mack. The problem there being actually being able to put Black down…

"Did Barnes say anything about reaching out to the Councilman of the Hunt?" he asked.

"Ozpin? He didn't mention it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did. I know Rustheart and Branwen both want to take a crack at the guy."

Rustheart and Branwen. The hero-professor and the guy Ozpin called whenever an unsolvable problem needed solving. Once upon a time Branwen had been a person of interest that the police kept tabs on for his relationship with one of the bandit lords of Mistral, but a combination of a lack of any evidence that they were in cahoots, plus Ozpin vouching heavily for the man, plus the fact that he'd helped out the department in dealing with some aura warriors they couldn;t handle like Torchwick's wife and the Courthouse Killer, plus the fact that he was so damn hard to keep track of meant that they no longer were investigating him.

"Yeah. I'll double check with him on that. We're gonna need the help."

The other officers nodded in silent, grim agreement.

"Rio, you call those two huntress girls from last night?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. Wanted to have my coffee first."

Mack gave her the finger. "Send me their scroll IDs. I'll call 'em myself." He had the incredibly lucky opportunity to ask the heiress of the SDC herself about the deal between her company and Winchester Arms. Torchwick was bound to find his answers anyway, but if Mack delivered then at least he'd get a decent payday out of it.

"Oh, alright." Rio pulled out her scroll and sent a message, and a second later Mack felt and heard his own scroll ping in his pocket.

"Hey, Cap!" Bison called from behind them, standing in the doorway to the precinct's garage.

Mack turned and lifted up the last cup of coffee in the carrier tray up as a gesture to the man.

"Oh sweet, thanks," Bison said, walking over to grab the drink. "The new earpieces from BSI are here. Should we get started syncing them to our scroll network?"

Blank Slate Industries. The biggest donors to the police department save Carson Winchester, though their donations were technology instead of weapons-new computers, laptops, communication gear. The officers arguably got more use out of the BSI donations than they did the Winchester firearms and body armor, too.

"Yeah, but don't desync the ones we're using now until you're sure everything's set up right. You know how tech can be."

"Yeah. I'm on it."

"Rio, Diaz, start scrubbing through traffic cam and other public security cam footage around the southern transit hub, see if you can figure out where Black went."

"Yessir!"

"Rio, Bison, and news on the survivor from last night's attack?"

Rio spoke up. "Yeah, he's out of surgery and on emergency watch for the next seventy-two hours. Doctors think he might need to go back under the knife at least once before he's fully stabilized."

'_Ouch.'_

Mack nodded "He awake?"

"Sedated for the next twelve hours, at least."

"Hm. Alright. Dukes, get a list of all of Black's previous residences and safehouses in the city, then reach out to any private businesses around the transit hub, ask them if we can get their security cam footage from the past four hours. Let 'em know we'll be getting a warrant for it soon. Make a note of any of the ones that refuse."

"Thinking they might be hiding him?"

"Yeah. Fronts for Torchwick or Junior or the Kings or whoever called him here."

"Kay-kay."

"'Kay-kay'? You join a new generation when I wasn't looking?" Mack joked, prompting a couple laughs from the other officers.

Duke would have blushed if his dark skin was capable of it. "Look man, my daughter says it all the time, a-ight? It was gonna slip into my speech eventually."

"You catch that, Mack?" Diaz grinned. "He said '_a-ight_'."

"What a clown," Mack muttered teasingly as he headed to his office. "Doesn't Black have a wife and son, too?"

"Son," Diaz confirmed. "Wife's dead, and he abandoned his kid to foster care when she bit it to pursue his work."

"Which district?"

"Saffron Hills, I think? I'd have to double check."

"Hm. Before you comb through the traffic cams, confirm where the son is and get in touch with Precinct Five-or whatever precinct whose district he's in-and see about setting up a surveillance team. Maybe Black might reach out, try to make amends for being a shitty-ass father."

"Ya think? Doesn't seem like the type to care."

Mack shrugged. "He's right around the age for a midlife crisis. Who knows."

Diaz accepted that with a nod.

"_A-ight_ everyone, you have your assignments. If you need more hands let me know-Black is more than enough reason to call people in on the weekend. And Camisol owes us a shift for leaving for the game last week anyway."

"He got _front row tickets_ to the windball semis, Mack," Bison said sarcastically. "It was very important."

"Get to work, cowman."

Bison laughed and gave Mack the finger before heading back into the garage.

Mack entered his office and got settled at his desk. Badge and gun in the top drawer, coffee on the coaster, computer on, scroll next to his keyboard, laces loosened. There was a small stack of three or four papers on the side of the desk that would be reports of any arrests made overnight. The top page was always the most pressing or important case and a quick glance showed that it was a petty theft, so he didn't bother going through each one. There were other things to deal with.

Should he call Barnes or the Schnee girl first? There was no guarantee that a teenage girl was awake at eight in the morning on a Sunday, so it might be best not to start there.

He dialed up his boss, Stephen Barnes, Councilman of War and Peace. He was a broad, powerful, balding man, imposing and self confident. He was nowhere near as intimidating as the Councilman of War and Peace in Atlas, though (or Lord or War and Peace, as the stuffed up Atlesians liked to refer to their Councilmen). Mack had only met James Ironwood once at a global security conference, and he'd given the strongest handshake Mack had ever experienced. Hadn't been promoted to general yet. And from what Mack had heard, the guy was now apparently the Lord of War and Peace _and_ the Lord of the Hunt, which he hadn't even thought was legal.

Atlas was a weird place.

He shook himself from his musing and focused. The scroll rang twice.

"Barnes."

"Morning, sir. Had some questions."

"Morning Macklin. Shoot."

"Are you planning to reach out to Councilman Ozpin to get some huntsman support for Marcus Black?"

"Mm. Already did. His professors have all been notified and have been told to be prepared to move at a moment's notice. I dispatched a couple Chariots to wait on their landing pad and deploy them into the city as fast as possible."

Damn. A hit squad of professors. That was a weird thought.

"And Branwen?"

"Out of the kingdom, unfortunately."

"Damn."

"Mm. It should be fine. Ozpin, Goodwitch, and Rustheart should all be more than enough to handle Black."

"Goodwitch?"

The noise of some papers shuffling around came over the line. "Yeah. Senior professor at Beacon."

"Blonde lady that was there to interrupt Torchwick's Dust heist a few weeks back?"

"Yeah."

"Is she scary?"

"Very."

"Is she _Marcus Black_ scary?"

"Guess we'll find out."

Mack grunted at that. If only Branwen was here. They _knew_ that that guy was Marcus Black levels of scary, and it would be nice to have the assurance out in the field right about now. Rustheart was up there too, so at least there was that.

"Guess so," he said. "Speaking of that Torchwick Dust spree…"

"Hm?"

"You remember how there was a girl there that night that helped stop him?"

"I saw it in the report, yeah. Rose, right?"

"Yeah, you know her?" Mack asked, surprised the Councilman had remembered the girl's name.

"No, but I knew her mother."

"Oh. Alright, well anyway, she was in another altercation last night."

"Was she one of the two huntresses in the pawn shop incident I just saw on the news?"

"Yeah."

"Mm. What about her?"

"Not her specifically, but one of my officers expressed some concerns about children throwing themselves into firefights and criminals that might be willing to kill them. She thinks we need to maybe talk to Ozpin about telling his students to… you know, _not_ do that."

"Mm. I could try. But I told you they're all a bunch of psychos with hero complexes. That includes Ozpin, and the whole hero thing is something he _wants_ them to have. Not sure he'd even say anything to 'em."

He wouldn't try to stop his own students from getting themselves killed?

"That's… fucked up."

"Mm. It is what it is. This is also the kind of thing we _need _them doing after they graduate. If you want to have Marcus Black scary level backup out there, then this is the kind of experience they need."

"It's just… cadets are at least twenty-two before they have to deal with… the shit we deal with. That girl is, like, _sixteen_."

"And she's probably been killing Grimm since she was twelve. I think they can handle street thugs."

"She couldn't handle the blood, though."

"She killed someone?"

"No! Not even. The killer did."

"Ah. Jackstabby, right?"

Mack smiled to himself that the Councilman remembered, then wiped it away when he remembered that Torchwick had liked it too.

"Yeah."

"Mm. I'll talk to Oz, whatever good it'll do."

"Alright."

"Anything else, Captain?"

Mack straightened his back. '_Torchwick also wants the girl to do mind-fucky torture crap to.'_

"No sir."

"Alright. Then let's get back to work and find this bastard Black."

"Yes sir."

*_click_*

Mack inhaled deeply and slumped in his chair. Talking to the Councilman was always a bit nerve wracking, though Barnes was nice enough. Serious about his job and the responsibilities, but as long as you performed he respected you. And Mack performed. Unless Torchwick forced him not to.

He clicked his mouse to wake his computer up and opened up a search browser to do some research on the Schnee girl. He wanted to make sure she actually was the heiress to the company. If she wasn't, he didn't want to ask her pointless questions she wouldn't know the answers to.

She might not know anyway.

'Wise Schnee.'

'Did you mean _Weiss Schnee_?'

Oh, so that's how it's spelled. He clicked on the correction and looked at the articles that pulled up.

The first was from three years ago, a Remnant Business Monthly article titled 'Second Schnee Named Heiress'.

So that answered that question. But _second_ Schnee named heir? That was interesting.

The second article was about the Red Carpet Gala from a few years ago, and the excerpt mentioned "_a performance by Weiss Schnee". _A musician of some kind. Neat, though not very helpful. Rio watched stuff like the Gala, maybe she'd seen the girl perform.

The third article was an Atlas Skywriters post from a couple months ago about her getting admitted to Beacon. The blurb excerpt under the article read:

"_... is unknown why she has chosen to attend the huntsman academy in Vale rather than our own, highly prestigious academy. Theories range from teen wanderlust to a feud with Winter, her…"_

How does one have a feud with a season? Although Atlas was already cold as hell, he could imagine Atlesian winters being something one could have a personal beef with.

Out of completely innocent curiosity, he went to the top of the page to tab over to the image results.

'_Damn.'_

Apparently she'd done a photoshoot or two within the last couple years. There were some absolutely stunning pictures of her in a mansion that, from the white and blue and grey color scheme, Mack guessed was probably just the Schnees' home. There was a photo of the whole Schnee family, with the stern looking father that looked so out of place with his greying brown hair and dark eyes next to the gorgeous mother and daughters and the young son, all with the white hair and startlingly blue eyes. The eldest daughter was also quite attractive, though she had the strong jaw of her father and the expression she wore while looking at the camera made Mack feel like he was somehow doing something idiotic.

He clicked on the image to see the descriptions. '_Jacques Schnee, his wife Willow Schnee, and their children, Winter, Weiss, and Whitley.'_

Oh. So that's what 'feud with Winter' meant. Bunch of W names, this family. Mack's own family had a father named Barrick and two sons, Burt and Barry, so he appreciated the name theming the Schnees had done.

One of the image results was of the magazine cover for the Remnant Business Monthly issue in which Weiss was featured. She was wearing tight fitting white dress with a blue blazer over it, and Mack found it incredibly attrac-

There was a knock on the door, and Mac instinctively clicked back over to the web results, even though the monitors were facing away from the door.

The door opened and Bison popped his head in.

"Hey, Cap. I need the admin password to get these earpieces hooked up."

"Oh. Precinct, uppercase P and the E is a three."

"That's dumb. You should make it Threecinct."

"_You're _dumb. And I didn't make the password."

"Whatever. This coffee's cold, by the way." The door clicked shut.

'_Brat.'_

Mack quickly scrolled through the rest of the first page web results. Most seemed to be entries that made Weiss seem like a mild teen celebrity rather than the heiress of the biggest business empire in the world. None of the headlines showed that she had anything to do with SDC business operations, so calling her for answers was looking more and more like a long shot.

Nothing for him to do but cross his fingers.

He checked the message Rio had sent him. Weiss_Schnee and R3DR3AP3R9000. At least it wasn't hard to guess which scroll ID went to which girl.

He dialed the heiress.

The dialing noise ended in the middle of the fifth ring.

"This is Weiss Schnee," a musical voice answered.

"Hello, Miss Schnee. This is Captain Macklin from the pawn shop last night. Do you have a moment?"

"Oh! Hello, officer. Yes, I do. I'm just eating breakfast now."

"_Yangcakes!"_ a tiny voice that Mack was fairly certain was the Ruby girl sounded out.

"_Pan_cakes," Weiss said in a tone of resignation. "They're called pancakes."

"_But Yang made 'em!" _

"So if you made them they'd be Rubycakes?"

"_No, they'd just be Yangcakes made by Ruby!"_

"That doesn't make any-ugh! I'm sorry officer. How can I help?"

Mack smiled at the antics. That interaction alone made him agree with Rio-any girls that were arguing about the name of their pancakes with a police officer on the scroll probably didn't have the maturity to be out on the streets dealing with serial killers.

"Well, first I just wanted to check in, see if you two were doing alright. How's Miss Rose handling everything? She okay?"

There was a brief pause before Weiss answered, "I think so. She's holding up, aren't you?"

A happy hum came across, slightly muffled.

"_Whoa!" _a third voice exclaimed before Mack could speak again. "_Is that the real Weiss Schnee giving my sister a hug?" _

"It's a _one-armed_ hug," Weiss qualified to this new person that was apparently Ruby's sister.

"_That's… still a hug."_

"Quiet, you. Thank you for asking, officer. I think we're doing o-"

"_Officer?"_ the third voice piped up again. "_Hey! Have you guys found the punk that attacked my sister?! I'll knock his teeth in!"_

"Stop-let go of my scroll! You're going to break-ow!"

"Hey," the third voice said with a forced sweetness, now much louder, and Mack got the impression that Weiss' scroll had been stolen. "I'm Yang."

"I'm Captain Macklin."

"Hi, Cap. Do y-"

"_Give me back my scroll!" _

"Stop it! No, no glyphs! Stop, I'm trying to have a conversation here, Weiss. Behave yourself!"

"_I-WHAT?!" _

"So, Cap. Do you guys have a name for that masked butthole?"

"Unfortunately, not yet."

"Are you sure? I just need a face to punch."

That made Macklin laugh. "I'm sure. I'm sorry. We're working hard to get a name, though."

"Let us know when you do?" She loaded her voice with more innocent sweetness that Mack wasn't buying at all.

"I'm not sure that would be appropriate," he replied. He wanted these child heroines _off_ the streets, not chasing down personal vendettas against known murderers.

"Oh, it would be _so_ appropriate," Yang said incredibly unconvincingly. "On a scale of one to ten, it would be, like, _super_ appropriate."

"_That doesn't make any sense, Yang,"_ Weiss griped in the background.

"You're _face _doesn't m-"

"_I will slap you!"_

"Yikes. Calm down, W-"

"_Give me my scroll!" _

There was a sound of scuffling for a bit, then a loud huff.

"I'm sorry, officer," Weiss said, now back in control of the scroll. "My teammate is an overgrown child."

Mack didn't feel like it was appropriate to point out that Weiss sounded just as childish from his end of the call. But yeah, there was no way these kids should be anywhere near the criminal elements of Vale.

"It's okay," he said with a light chuckle. "So you two are alright?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. That's good. I also wanted to ask if either of you have remembered anything more from last night. People can sometimes forget details immediately after a trauma, but maybe after a good night's sleep…?"

"Umm… I personally haven't remembered anything else. Ruby?"

"_Hm?" _

"Do you remember anything from last night that we didn't already tell the police?"

"_Mrph hrrmf-" _

"Finish chewing, dolt."

There was a long pause that Mack spent shaking his head in disbelief. '_How on Remnant are these girls Grimm slayers?'_

"_I'm, like, ninety-two point eight seven fix six four-" _

"Ruby."

"_-percent sure that the guy's eyes were grey, now. But that's just from replays in my dreams, so I don't know how reliable it is."_

"_You were dreaming about it?" _a fourth female voice asked.

There was a pause that Macklin assumed consisted of Ruby nodding.

"I did, too," Weiss said quietly.

"_Captain, find me somebody to punch!" _Yang yelled.

"We're doing our best," Mack reassured her, though he wasn't sure if he was on speakerscroll for her to hear.

"I'm not sure if you heard, officer," Weiss said, "but Ruby's fairly certain he has grey eyes, which would match what I saw too."

"Thank you. I'll add it to the description." It was something they already knew from a previous civilian witness, but Mack figured it would be good to let the girls think they're helping.

"_Like Ruby's eyes?"_ the fourth voice asked.

"_Ruby's eyes are _silver_, excuse you," _Yang responded.

"_What's the… difference?"_

"Ruby's eyes are _way_ prettier," Weiss answered. Mack wasn't sure how that was a qualification between grey and silver, but he had to agree that Ruby's eyes _were_ quite pretty.

'_Stop.'_

"_Awww, you think my eyes are pretty?" _Ruby asked.

"I-sure. Yes, they are objectively pretty eyes."

"_What about me?" _Yang asked.

"_Fishing for compliments much?"_ the fourth voice asked.

"_Shudup!"_

"Anyway, Weiss," Mack interrupted. Now it was time to fib a little. "I also wanted to specifically ask you something."

"Oh? How can I help?"

"We have reason to believe that this killer is specifically targeting criminals that have stolen weapons from Winchester Arms." A fib. While the guns that Junior's men had were indeed mostly manufactured by and stolen-or purchased-from Winchester Arms, there was no reason for them to suspect it was a motivation for the killer. He'd made no attempts to take back the weapons and return them. Indeed, he usually destroyed them when given enough time. The force's running theory for this killer was that he was someone that had suffered at the hands of organized crime, maybe Junior's hands specifically, and was taking out a personal vendetta.

"Okay…" Weiss said, sounding confused.

"We've received word that Winchester Arms and the Schnee Dust Company recently made some sort of business deal. I was wondering if you might be able to provide any information about it, as that might help as figure out where he'll strike next."

And that was utter bullshit. The logic didn't even really track, but Weiss seemed to be the kind of person that respected police authority, so hopefully she'd answer even if she saw the lack of rationale.

"I'm not s-I'm sorry, sir. I don't know anything about that. Since I came to Beacon, my father hasn't kept me informed of any of the dealings of the company."

"Did he before?"

"Yes, though I didn't have any decision-making power. He mostly just wanted me to learn the ropes."

"You didn't hear anything about any developing deals with Winchester Arms?"

"No sir. Most of our deals are with the Atlesian military. But… do you want my father's ID? You could call him directly and ask. I'm sure he'd be ha-well… he might help."

Mack had no delusions that the infamously cutthroat and ruthless Jacques Schnee wouldn't call him on his bullshit, but he also knew if he said no to this offer it would seem suspicious.

"I'd appreciate that."

"I'll send it over," she said earnestly. "Also, um, Cardin Winchester is a student here. I don't have his ID, but maybe he might know more? Or-have you tried asking Winchester Arms directly?"

Mack felt even worse for lying to the girl that was so eager to try to help. "Not yet. We just got this info and I asked you first 'cause I wanted to call you first and see how you and Miss Rose were doing anyway."

"Oh. Right. Thank you for that. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help."

"It's quite alright, Miss Schnee. I'm glad you two are doing alright. The offer for counseling still stands, should you need it. If either of you two remember anything else you feel might be able to help the investigation, please feel free to give me a call directly."

"Thank you, Captain Macklin. We will."

"Thank you. Have a good day."

"You too, sir."

"_Bye, Mister Popo!" _

"Ruby!"

The line disconnected then, which was probably a good thing because Mack busted out in an incredibly non-authoritative laugh.

Mister Popo. That was cute as hell.

There was a knock on the door again, and this time it was Rio that stepped in.

"Watching cat videos again?"

Mack narrowed his eyes. "I never did to begin with and I resent the accusation."

"Uh-huh," Rio responded skeptically.

Another laugh slipped out of Mack. "No, I just spoke to the huntress girls from last night. When they're not dealing with bloody trauma, they're… they're characters."

"Heroes of tomorrow type characters?"

Mack shrugged. "The fuck is that even supposed to look like?"

Now Rio shrugged. "Maybe it's a 'you know it when you see it' kinda thing?"

"Well, I don't know anything about anything, so no dice."

Rio laughed and walked up to sit in one of the two chairs on the other side of Mack's desk. "Ain't that the truth."

"You got a reason for being in my office, rookie?"

"Givin' you an update."

"Mm. Spill."

"Diaz found out that Black's kid was in the Saffron Hills foster home, but he turned eighteen and left seven months ago. He's in the wind."

"Damn."

"Yeah. Precinct Five said they'd look, but they're not optimistic about their chances of finding him. No credit card under his name, no known scroll ID to track."

"Damn."

"I also found traffic cam footage of Black jacking a car near the train station. Got on K-10 heading east. We put out a bolo for the vehicle."

"Saffron Hills?"

Rio shook her head slightly. "Maybe, but it would have been faster for him to take the King's Road north and then get on thirty-five."

"Mm." Damn it, he was pulling a Barnes. "So probably heading to his next job or employer."

"Yeah. Probably Eastside Kings, since pretty much everything from Cedar Run out is their territory."

Mack nodded. "Good work, Rio. We'll make a cop out of you yet."

"I'm already a cop," she grumbled with a fake frown.

"Are you, though?" Mack joked, squinting his eyes and tilting his head.

Rio laughed and stood. "Screw you too, Cap. I'll get back to work. Enjoy your cat videos."

"I'm a dog person!" Mack shouted after her as the door closed.

His scroll beeped then and he checked his messages. New message from an unknown ID.

bowlerhatsRbesthats: Names of those huntresses?

Torchwick. One of his throwaways.

There was no way Mack was going to betray those girls. They trusted him, or at least they trusted his badge. They'd called him "Mister Popo", which was still putting a goofy smile on his face.

He put his scroll down without responding. He knew he'd pay for this, but he had to draw a line here, protecting this heroines-to-be. Hopefully he'd be able to bring down Marcus Black before Torchwick tore him down, so he'd have something to be proud of when he went to prison.

Granted, he probably wouldn't last long in the slammer, regardless of if he went to Vale Penitentiary or the dreaded Rykeman's Island, the prison reserved for the aura warriors that couldn't be controlled-or the truly evil fucks that deserved the worst. Whichever one he went to, his status of 'former cop and captain that put a lot of you in here' would see him dead within the first week.

That would suck, but then again, his life had ended with his marriage. He'd just been going through the motions for a while now.

He just had to hope Torchwick wouldn't find out who the girls were some other way, because then this would all be for nothing.

* * *

**I'm sure a lot of you will have a lot of... opinions about some of the stuff in here, particularly one of the characterization choices I made. Keep in mind I am not condoning any kind of behaviour. I was just curious to write a character with 'bad views but is arguably a decent person' that isn't Weiss, someone we all already like. I'm curious to see if you guys are as quick to forgive Macklin as we are to forgive Weiss for her racism. **

**Also, turning Marcus Black into the boogieman and Qrow into the... good guy boogieman (?) has been fun as hell. And we get to see some non-huntsman views on huntsmen, which was neat to think through.**

**Can't wait to read your thoughts, and remember to be logged in if you review so I can respond! : ) **


	23. Thaw 2-7

"Bye, Mister Popo!"

"Ruby!"

Weiss had already been in the motion of ending the scroll call. Maybe she'd hung up in time that the officer hadn't heard Ruby? If she hadn't… well, that was embarrassing.

"What?!" Ruby squeaked with a happy little grin. "Is the 'Mister' part inappropriate?"

From the teasing grin Ruby was giving her, Weiss knew that Ruby knew what was wrong.

"Don't be cute," she huffed.

"Weiss!" Yang exclaimed. "Look at the Peanut! How can she _not _be cute?"

Ruby nodded solemnly. "'Tis impossibru," she said seriously.

Weiss rolled her eyes and went back to eating her Yangc-_pancakes!_

"Relax, Weiss!" Ruby chirped, scooting her chair over to give Weiss' arm one of those annoying hugs. "I bet he just thought it was funny!"

"We're _huntresses_, Ruby, not comedians." Weiss gave her arm a shake, but Ruby didn't take-or refused to take-the hint and kept clinging to her happily. "He's not _supposed_ to think we're funny. He's supposed to think we're powerful and capable."

"He's _supposed_ to give me a name to punch," Yang growled at her quickly emptying plate.

"How does one punch a name?" Blake mused.

She'd been blatantly avoiding speaking or even looking at Weiss all morning, but she was being nice enough to Ruby and Yang. From the way she was squinting at the light and speaking so quietly, she was also clearly still nursing a massive headache.

Yang had tactfully taken what had become Blake's seat over the past week, so now Weiss had a blustering blonde sitting across from her.

"With a friendly little love tap from Ember-" Yang raised her right hand "-and an angry smackdown from Celica!" She punched her left hand into her open palm.

"Ssssshhhh," Blake hissed, leaning forward and placing her elbows on the table, wrapping her hands around the top of her head. "Loud voice is bad voice."

Yang reached over and gave her partner's back a rub. "You want some coffee, Babe-adonna? It'll help."

"Even when I was drunk I didn't think 'Babe-adonna' was a good name, and you're somehow saying it both sober and unironically."

"I will wear you down!" Yang declared.

Blake groaned and stabbed a pancake with her fork, then let it go. "At this rate, I very much believe you. Soon I'll be burning books, wearing short shorts, and calling you Yang Xiao-Longlegs."

Yang burst out laughing, which earned her another pained hiss from her partner.

"Xiao-Longlegs. I like it. Maybe we should give Blake naming authorities for our team combos."

"What?!" Ruby screeched. "No, you can't do that!" She jabbed a finger into the table. "Veto!" She jabbed the table three more times, crying, "Veto! Veto! Veto!"

"What are you _doing_, Ruby?" Weiss asked, exasperated.

"I'm pressing my veto button!"

"You don't _have_ a veto button."

"Yes I do! All the team leaders got one!"

Yang shook her head at her sister, then turned and gave Blake a squeeze around the shoulders. "I'll go make you some coffee, babe."

"Thank you," Blake sighed back.

"What did all team leaders get?" a voice behind them asked. Weiss turned. It was Jaune and the rest of Team JNPR, coming into the kitchen from their room. "Did I miss something?"

"The veto button!" Ruby replied. "_Rememberrr_? Professor Ozpin gave us veto rights on all our team's dumb ideas?" She waggled her eyebrows pointedly.

"Oh!" Jaune blinked twice. "Yes, that… thing. Yes. Professor Ozpin totally gave us… that."

"Wow. I'm convinced," Nora joked. She skipped over to the table and leaned forward to inspect Weiss' plate of food-_far_ too close for Weiss' comfort.

"What are you-"

"Whatcha got there?" Nora asked, oblivious. "My food detectors do detect the presence of pancakes!"

"Food detectors?" Weiss questioned.

"Yangcakes!" Ruby corrected, because of course she did.

"You guys want some?" Yang asked as she prepped the coffee machine. "I can make some more."

"Ren was going to make us some, actually," Pyrrha said, taking a seat with Jaune on a barstool at the kitchen counter. "But, thank you."

"You sure? I bet my Yangcakes are better than lame Rencakes!"

"Incorrect," Ren stated simply, unequivocally.

"I bet Rencakes are all quiet and thoughtful," Yang said to nobody in particular. "Who wants quiet and thoughtful breakfast food?"

"Are your pancakes… loud?" Pyrrha asked.

"And _stoooooped_?" Nora added.

Yang stopped and tilted her head, trying to think of a way out of this hole she dug herself in. "Uhhh, ummm… hm, I got nothing."

"I guess your pancakes made you stupid." Jaune teased.

"Nah, that's just Yang," Weiss said.

"Hey!"

"But what's wrong with quiet and thoughtful?" Blake mumbled.

"That's true," Weiss added. "_Blake_ is quiet and thoughtful." Maybe a compliment would make Blake less mad at her?

Blake had been rubbing her head, and immediately just froze at Weiss' words. From the angle of her head, Weiss couldn't see her eyes, but she could see her eyelids flicking a bit like her eyes were darting around.

In the kitchen, Yang kept rolling with the conversation. "Well, yeah. It's cool when _Blake_ does it."

"What's so special about Blake?" Jaune asked.

"Uh, she's hot enough to pull it off?" Blake's cheeks went red. "No offense, Ren."

"None taken," Ren said easily. "It's an accurate assessment. Though I'm not sure how looks have anything to do with being a quiet person."

"_I_ think Ren's hot!" Nora proclaimed.

"We know, Nora," Jaune and Pyrrha said at the same time.

Ren nodded, completely unfazed.

"Heehee," Nora intoned, wandering over to take a seat beside Pyrrha.

Ren headed into the kitchen and silently took stock of all the dirty dishes and utensils that he had probably been intending to use.

"Oh! I'll clean up. Gimme one second." Yang quickly finished setting up the coffee machine, hit a button, and then bustled over to the sink.

Ren gently held an arm out in front of her. "It's quite alright. I got it. Go enjoy your breakfast."

"What? No! This is our mess!"

Ren waved her argument away. "I don't mind, promise."

'_Dang. Ren is great,'_ Weiss thought.

"But then you'll have to clean up twice!" Yang tried again.

"Naaaah," Jaune said lightly. "We'll make Nora clean up after."

"What?!" Nora squeaked.

"So how's your weekend going, Team RWBY?" Pyrrha asked.

"Pretty good!" Ruby answered. "We, uh…" Something flashed across her face as she thought back to what happened last night.

It was the first place Weiss' thoughts went to.

Ruby picked herself back up though. "Weiss and I went shopping! She got me some awesome fancy clothes. And we had sushi! And Weiss and I checked out the statue gardens while Yang and Blake went clubbing."

"Is that why Blake looks like a damp towel that got beaten by a slightly damper towel?" Nora asked.

"What kinda sexy towels have you been using?" Yang asked, coming over to Blake's side and standing by her, massaging a shoulder with one hand.

"Stoooop," Blake groaned. "Too much moving."

Nora let out a gasp. "Did you get to drink? Are you eighteen already? I can't wait 'til _I'm_ old enough to drink. Just three more months!"

Ren whirled around and pointed the spatula he'd been cleaning at her with a very uncharacteristic urgency. "You're never touching alcohol. Ever. We've talked about this."

"But Reeeeeen!"

The dynamic of Ren the stern rule setter and Nora the whining child reminded Weiss so much of her relationship with Ruby-who was still hugging her arm, she noted-that it was more than a little alarming.

"No." Ren declared.

"What's wrong with… what?" Weiss asked. Not that she saw anything wrong with never drinking-she'd seen how alcohol had destroyed her mother-but this seemed to be a strangely personal thing.

Jaune, Pyrrha, and Ren all exchanged looks.

"It's, uh…" Jaune started.

"Not important!" Nora chimed in.

"Sure, not important," he finished.

Weiss looked at her teammates-or rather, Ruby and Yang, since Blake was still refusing to meet her eyes. Ruby just looked confused, but Yang's gaze seemed to hold the same suspicious concern that Weiss figured hers had.

"Oookay," Yang said. "Well what about you guys? How's your weekend been?"

"Awfuuuuuul," Jaune groaned, prompting a giggle from Pyrrha.

"Aw! What's awful?" Ruby asked.

"Pyrrha's been-" he gave an exaggerated shudder and dropped his voice low "-_training me._"

"It's not that bad," Pyrrha said lightly.

"Everything hurts!"

"Then learn to keep your guard up!" Pyrrha coupled the suggestion with a light punch to Jaune's shoulder.

"Owww."

"Oh, stop it."

"Beating me with your stupid super warrior goddess death stick isn't enough for you?"

"Did you just call Milo stupid?" Pyrrha asked, looking a tad genuinely offended.

"Is Milo your weapon's name?" Ruby exclaimed. She let go of Weiss' arm so she could turn to face Pyrrha, and the sudden temperature shift on her skin was a little annoying to Weiss. "That's so cute! Does your shield have a name?"

"Akuo."

"Cool! That, like, rhymes!... Kinda." A frown of confusion creased Ruby's brow, and she looked to Weiss for… something. Help?

"They mean Speak and Listen," Pyrrha said.

"Oh yeah?" Weiss asked. "What language?"

"Greek."

"What's Greek?" Yang asked.

The room went silent.

"You know… I don't know," Pyrrha said slowly.

Everyone looked around at each other.

"Anyway, you guys got plans for today?" Jaune asked Ruby.

"Ummmm, not really."

"Studying," Weiss declared.

Ruby scrunched up her face and wailed, "Waaah!"

"What even is there the study?" Yang asked grumpily. "Haven't we done all of our homework?"

"Not the Dust Theory homework," Weiss answered at the same time Blake said, "Dust Theory."

Weiss blinked at Blake while Blake pointedly looked away, and an awkward silence fell.

"Crap," Yang finally said. "I don't want to do math on a Sunday!"

"I don't want to math _ever_!" Ruby chirped in rebellious support.

"Yeah!" Yang agreed.

"Don't be idiots," Weiss grumbled before taking another bite of her Ya-pancakes.

They were really good, much to Weiss' chagrin. She hadn't wanted to like Yang's cooking on principle, but they were so dang light and fluffy!

Klein's crepes were still better, though.

"Uh, Weiss?" Jaune suddenly spoke up. He was looking at something on his scroll.

"Yes?"

'_This better not be another hapless attempt at hitting on me.'_

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

'_What?!'_

"What?! No, of course not!"

What in the world kind of flirting was that? She knew Jaune was hopeless, but that was… she wasn't even sure what that was.

"You have a girlfriend?" Ruby asked.

"No!"

"There's nothing wrong with having a girlfriend, Weiss," Yang said.

"I don't have a girlfriend!"

"You may want to check Blabber," Jaune said.

"Um." She pulled out her scroll and opened up her Blabber app. The main feed was a bunch of meaningless nonsense blurbs from a bunch of people she didn't care to spend half a thought on-she'd just followed all these businessmen, politicians, actors and actresses, and other people of "importance" because it was expected of her.

"What am I looking for?" she asked as she scrolled through the blurbs.

"Check your mentions."

At this point, Ruby had spun back around and was leaning against Weiss' shoulder to get a view of he scroll. The physical proximity of her partner was still a bit of an itch on Weiss' brain, but she was getting scarily used to it, which was definitely not good. There wasn't much she could do about it though-if she pushed Ruby away she'd get those big pouty eyes and feel so guilty even while consciously knowing she shouldn't.

Weiss tabbed over to her profile where her last post had been a couple months ago announcing her admittance into Beacon, then realized she didn't know how to get to her "mentions". She'd never bothered to learn this stupid system.

"That one," Ruby said, pointing with a tiny finger towards the button along the top with the symbol.

"Thanks," Weiss said quietly.

The first blurb on that page was by an article by the Vale Gossip-if a blurb could really be considered a news article in the first place. The title read "Weiss Schnee and Mystery Girlfriend Fail to Stop Dancetown Killer".

"... _What?!_"

"What does it say?" Yang asked, leaning forward across the table like an oaf to try to read Weiss' scroll upside down.

"When did you stop the killer dude with your mystery girlfriend?" Ruby asked, blinking confusedly.

'_Is… there's no way she's this dense.'_

"They're talking about _you_, dolt!"

"But I'm not a killer _or_ a dude!" Ruby protested.

"What-no, Ruby, th… They think _you_ are my mystery girlfriend."

Ruby blinked at her. Once. Twice.

"Oh."

Yang let out a little cackle.

Weiss clicked open the link to the full article. "Let's see just how much idiocy I'm going to sue them for," she muttered to herself.

'_Last night at around 8:00 PM, the Dancetown Killer struck again. This time the attack was on a pawn shop that we now know was serving as a front for organized crime to smuggle weapons, drugs, and Dust. _

_It also just so happened that a pair of huntresses-in-training from Beacon Academy were out on a date nearby, according to police statements. They heard the gunshots from the fight and ran to intervene. They did not manage to capture the Dancetown Killer, but they did allow for one of the gang members to escape alive (something that has not happened in any previous attacks) and captured another who was left in critical condition from a knife injury. _

_One of these huntresses was identified by witnesses on the scene as none other than Weiss Schnee, first year student at Beacon, amateur musician, and heiress to the Schnee Dust Company.'_

"_Amateur_ musician?" Weiss huffed in disbelief.

"Hm?" Ruby hummed, skipping ahead to try to find the line Weiss was talking about. "Oh. I'm sure they mean it in a nice way," she tried to consolle Weiss.

Weiss shot her a 'really?' look. "Not everyone is you, Ruby."

"What you mean?"

"Not everyone is so nice all the time."

"Oh."

'_Weiss was dressed to impress, according to police and witness statements, as was her unidentified female partner. This raises quite a few questions, most notably what does Weiss' notably conservative father, Jacque Schnee, CEO of Schnee enterprises, thinks of his daughter's unconservative relationship? Does he even know? And is this just a rebellious teen's fling, or a result of something more? It is still unknown why Weiss Schnee chose to attend Beacon Academy instead of Atlas Academy in her own home kingdom-perhaps she was running away to be with her girlfriend in a place where she wouldn't have to hide her relationship from her father and the general public?_

_Weiss herself was unavailable to comment, but worry not, readers, for I, Mark Ment, will delve tirelessly to get down to the Truth of the Gossip. _

Weiss just stared at the screen for a long time. Ten seconds later, Ruby leaned back in her chair.

"Huh."

"What's it _say_?" Yang asked again.

"It says a bunch of libel and slander that _nobody_ should be reading," Weiss replied.

"It has almost ten thousand likes," Jaune said from behind. "And… yikes. Don't look at the comments."

Yang grunted and pulled out her own scroll. "I'll just go find it myself," she grumbled.

"But why?" Weiss asked testily. "It's not true. Don't consume the lying media, that's what keeps them going!"

"Why does it say you were 'dressed to impress'?" Ruby wondered aloud.

"What?" Of the things that were said in this article, that was the _last_ thing she had issue with. And… and did Ruby not think she was dressed nicely?

"It's just… you _always_ look like a princess! Saying you were 'dressed to impress' makes it sound like you were dressed better than normal, but you weren't! You looking that nice is normal."

"Ah." That was… actually very sweet. "They probably don't know that, though."

"Then they're pretty crappy reporters," Ruby said with a smile.

That smile…

"You're trying to distract me, aren't you?" Weiss accused her partner.

"Wut! Nooo, I would never!" Ruby's eyes darted to Yang for a fraction of a second, a silent request for backup that went unnoticed by Yang because the oaf was too busy reading this ridiculous article.

"You _are_!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and glanced back down at the article.

'_What does Weiss' notably conservative father, Jacque Schnee, CEO of Schnee enterprises, thinks of his daughter's unconservative relationship?'_

This was not good. She needed to get out ahead of this. Let her father know that this was a bunch of internet gossip bullcrap before he saw it himself. Unless… maybe he wasn't going to see it? He was as cynically dismissive of social media, so maybe he wouldn't see this. So bringing it to his attention would just be worse. Unless he did see it, and if Weiss didn't prep him with context beforehand… But if he never saw it then it would be bad to bring it up. Unless-

"You're thinking about your dad, aren't you?" Ruby asked, breaking Weiss' circular thinking.

"Hm? Oh. Ah…"

Ruby nodded seriously, a tiny frown pulling down on her lips. "See? _That's _what I was trying to distract you from."

Weiss shook off her mild panic enough to raise her eyebrow. "I thought you said you'd _never_ do that."

Ruby's eyes went wide. "I… right! Yes. I would never."

In an attempt to not smile like an idiot, Weiss pursed her lips together and glared at her partner.

Ruby gulped.

That tiny theatric was enough to break Weiss' demeanor. She rolled her eyes a bit. She wanted to say thank you, but also didn't because that would mean that she'd really needed distracting. Plus, there were all these other people around and Weiss didn't want to have to explain anything to them.

She settled for giving Ruby a smile and bumping shoulders.

Ruby lit up at that.

"Oh, hey!" she chirped excitedly.

"Hey," Weiss replied easily.

"Instead of being dumb and boring and doing _homework_ on a Sunday-"

"Bleck," Yang cut in, still reading the stupid article. Blake was coyly reading off her partner's scroll, using her hair to try to cover her eyes and hide her curiosity.

"Exactly!" Ruby continued. "Instead of _that_, we could play board games!"

"Oooh! We have four people!" Yang completely forgot about the article she was reading as she looked excitedly across the table at Ruby. She lowered her scroll and Blake scowled lightly and leaned forward to try to keep reading. "We can play Four Kingdoms: Conquest!"

"Yeah!" Ruby turned her big silver eyes on Weiss and put on her puppy dog face.

'_Damn that face.'_

"Can we play it, Weiss? Pleeeeease? It's so much fun and we pretty much always have to play it with three people 'cause Uncle Qrow's always busy and can't be our fourth and it's _way_ better with four people and you could be Atlas-they're really strong-and it would be a ton of fun and we co-"

"Ruby!"

Ruby stopped vomiting words to blink hopefully. "Yes, Weiss?"

"Breathe."

"Does that mean yes?"

"It _means_ breathe."

Ruby pouted.

A sigh escaped Weiss' lips. "How long does this game take?"

Ruby lit up again. "Well, it depends! Vacuo tries to win the game as fast as possible, but Atlas wants to push it long so they can develop their mechs and be uber unstoppable. And Vale needs to spend most of the early game training its huntsmen and then try to win in that sweet spot where they're stronger than Vacuo but before Atlas can take over. And Mistral-"

"Yang, how long does this game take?" Weiss interrupted.

Yang smirked. "You mean how long does it _last_?"

"... Sure."

"One to three hours," she said with a shrug.

There was a sputter from Ruby that coupled with her deflating a bit. "I guess I shoulda just said that, huh."

A pang of guilt stabbed at Weiss, and she reached over to pat Ruby's hand. "You're fine," she said. "What were you saying about Mistral?"

Ruby gave her a slow, tentative smile, then it brightened suddenly and she launched back into her explanation.

"Right! So Mistral, like, sucks, right? They're really weak on their own, but they also don't give a lot of rewards for conquering them, and they have _really _good trade deals. So There's a weird balance fo wanting to get good trade deals with Mistral but not letting them stick around long enough to get super strong from all the resources they've gotten."

Weiss nodded slowly. "Sounds… neat."

"So you wanna play?" Ruby clasped her hands in front of her chest with the plea.

After letting her breath slowly hiss out her nose, Weiss nodded reluctantly. "Sure."

"Wooho-!"

"But we have to do our homework first!"

"Awwwwww!"

"Do we _have_ to, though?" Yang grumped at her.

"Yes."

"Ugh, whatever." She went back to reading the stupid article.

Weiss suppressed an eyeroll. The were children. Actually children. Then something occurred to her: would Blake want to play a board game with Weiss there?

"Would… does everyone want to play?" she asked, trying to be as diplomatic as possible.

Blake's eyes flickered up and met hers for the briefest of instances before darting away again.

"Su-"

"Yeah we do!" Nora cheered from the bar counter.

Right. Team JNPR was still here.

Ren cleared his throat, though it was hard to hear because he was still all the way in the kitchen and he was a very quiet person. "I don't think the game can support eight people, Nora."

"We could play Admiral Radar, though!" Ruby offered. "That's made for eight people!"

"I don't think we packed it, Rubes."

Ruby's eyebrows scrunched up in a frown. "Really? I swore I put it in my suitcase…"

Yang smiled a little. "Yeah, but Dad took it out so we could fit, you know, your clothes in there?"

"But why though?!"

"Because you need to bring clothes with you, Ruby!" Yang said with a laugh at her sister's distraught face.

"But Weiss got me better clothes anyway!"

That made Weiss feel pretty great, but Yang's smile died instantly. "Hey." She pointed a finger at Ruby. "No."

"No what?"

Yang glanced quickly at Weiss, who was afraid Yang was going to randomly start yelling at her again, then back at her sister. "I know Weiss' fancy clothes are very nice-"

"And awesome and pretty!" Ruby chirped, making Weiss smile proudly.

"Yeah, sure. But that doesn't mean you can take the clothes Dad got your for granted. He worked really hard to get you those."

"I know! I didn't mean… I'm sorry."

The guilty look on Ruby's face was enough to make Weiss realize this was actually important and not just Yang being combative. She'd never meant to make Ruby not appreciate her father...

"It's okay," Yang said gently. "But… yeah, we didn't bring Admiral Radar with us."

"Poo." Ruby turned back to Nora. "We could play teams! Like me and Weiss could be Atlas, Yang and Bl-"

"Weiss and I," Weiss said instinctively.

"Oh, right," Ruby said. Weiss was hit with another bout of pure gratefulness for her partner. Someone else-like, say, Yang-would have reacted very differently to Weiss being a Grammar Grimmling, but Ruby accepted it without complaint.

"But yeah! Weiss and I could be a team, and Yang and Blake, and Jaune and Pyrrha, and you and Ren! Eight people, but still four kingdoms!"

"That sounds grrrrreat!" Nora agreed.

It most definitely did not sound great to Weiss. Eight people was four more people than she was used to, and six more than she was comfortable with.

Wait, six more? Not seven?

Weiss blinked in surprise and looked at Ruby as she realized what her thoughts meant. She'd gotten comfortable being around Ruby? When had that happened?

"It _sounds_ like we'd be intruding on Team RWBY's game," Pyrrha said with that super friendly Pyrrha tone of voice. "Besides, we've been cooped up in this dorm for a week. I thought we wanted to go to the city today?"

"And there's the windball game today," Ren added.

"Oh yeah!" Nora said. "Screw board games! Let's go outside!"

"Wait, who's playing today?" Yang perked up.

"Hatotaun Heroes and Danto Dancers," Ren replied as he flipped a pancake. "Starts at two, I believe."

"Yoooo," Yang breathed out. "And it's here?"

Pyrrha nodded. "Vale City Stadium."

"Yoooooo," Yang intoned again, slightly louder this time.

"General admission tickets are only twenty-five lien," Jaune added.

"YOOOOOOOO!"

"Yang, please," Blake muttered, clamping her hands down over her bow (?) and sagging her head back down to the table again.

"Sorry," Yang whispered. "Rubes, you wanna go watch the game?"

"No," Ruby answered flatly with a pout. "I wanna play board games!"

"Yeah yeah yeah! We can play Four K:C and then go watch the game. Imagine how jealous Dad would be if we video called him from Vale City Stadium watching the Heroes in person!"

Ruby scrunched up her face in thought and nodded slowly. "Truuuue…"

"But what about homework?" Weiss butted in. They seemed to be forgetting the most important thing here.

"Ermahgersh, Weiss!" Yang groaned. "We'll do it later! Ruby, come onnnnn! Let's go! We haven't been to a live game in, what, almost six years?"

"Uncle Qrow's birthday!" Ruby recalled with a happy chirp.

"Yeah! Soooo? Whadaya say?"

Ruby looked at Weiss, who crossed her arms and did her very best to look stern, but that just made Ruby grin for whatever reason. Then she looked back at Yang. Then at Weiss, then at Yang.

"How 'bout… We _start_ with board games, and _then _we can start our homework and, if we get a lot done, we go to the game! Then we can finish our homework when we get back!" She pointed a finger in the air dramatically in her 'team leader decree' pose.

Weiss huffed. "Why don't we _start_ with the homework? You know, the one thing we actually _need_ to do?"

"Because that's dumb, Weiss," Yang answered.

"How is-"

"Abadababa!"

"How-"

"Flibbitybop!"

"Stop do-"

"Blurgyblurg!"

"..."

Yang nodded once, satisfied. "See? It's dumb."

"You did not at _all_ win that argument," Weiss shot back, crossing her arms again. "You're the only dumb thing here."

Yang snapped and pointed finger guns at Weiss with a big, stupid grin. "But IIIIIII made breakfast!"

"What does that have to do with anything?!"

"It means my vote counts ten times!"

"No it doesn't!"

"Yuh huh! Tell her, Ruby-roo!"

Weiss turned to her partner, who grinned at her sheepishly. "Those are the rules…" Ruby said like a traitor.

"According to whom? Your ridiculous father? Or your dog? Or _Yang_?"

"Nooo, according to Mom!" Ruby protested.

"Oh."

Weiss really hoped Ruby didn't think she'd just insulted her dead mother.

"Did you just say _whom_?" Yang snarked from the side.

"It _is_ the correct use of the word," Weiss shot back.

"Yeah, but, like, who _says_ that?"

"Educated people!"

Blake groaned and lifted her head slightly. "I know you two love to bicker, but is it possible for you to do it about two notches quieter?"

"I don't _bicker_!" Weiss protested at the same time Yang whispered, "Sorry, babe."

"Ugh," Blake grunted. "I'm gonna go lie down." She moved to stand up, then flopped back down in her chair and clutched her head again. "Or I'll just sit here forever," she muttered to herself.

Yang patted her back. "Want me to help you to the room and bring your coffee to you?"

"Yes, please," Blake answered quietly, sagging into Yang's side as the girl helped her from her chair.

"But wait!" Ruby spoke up. "Are you playing Conquest with us?" She batted those long eyelashes and made her eyes wide and hopeful.

Blake glanced ever so quickly at Weiss, then at Ruby for a lot longer.

"Fiiiiine," she sighed.

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered, throwing her hands in the air.

"Sssssh!" Blake hissed, cringing away from Ruby and into Yang's side.

"Right. Sorry."

"Come on, Bellagrumps," Yang said as she lead her partner towards their room.

"I'm not grumps, _you're _grumps."

"Caught me."

A quiet settled over the table, with Team JNPR's idle chatter serving as background noise, and Weiss took the opportunity to finish up her pancakes. She'd only gotten two-unlike her walking human travesty of a partner (who drowned her pancakes in syrup) or her sister, who each had five-so it was pretty easy. Even so, she was slightly surprised when she realized she'd finished her pancakes before Ruby. She looked over and…

Ruby was staring at her fingertips again, like she had been last night. Weiss knew where her head was at.

"Hey, you okay?"

Ruby blinked and looked up at her blankly for a long, long moment. It was so weird to see Ruby not smiling it was almost uncomfortable. But then the moment passed and Ruby plastered a wide grin on her face. "Yep!" She quickly dug into her food, and what had remained of her tower of pancakes was gone a minute later.

She leaned back with a smile and let out a satisfied, "Aaaah," and rubbed her belly like an idiot. "Good stuff. You like da Yangcakes?" she asked Weiss.

Weiss gave a nod. "Yes. Those _pan_cakes are quite good."

Ruby just giggled like a little deviant.

"Pancakes," Weiss repeated.

After a moment of searching Weiss' face, Ruby pursed her lips and leaned forward as if to whisper something. Weiss leaned forward to meet her.

Ruby took a deep breath… then _screamed_ in Weiss' ear.

"YANGCAKES!"

Weiss shrieked and shoved away from the deafening noise, tumbling sideways out of her chair.

Through the chaos of hitting the floor and rolling away, Weiss was keenly aware of Ruby and Nora both cackling.

"RUBYYY!" she shrieked, climbing to her feet.

Ruby clamped her mouth shut and blinked wide eyes at her, looking both scared and struggling to suppress laughter at the same time. "Weiss, no! I'm an innocent Rubes!"

"Come here!" Weiss screeched, running at her partner. She wanted to shout something in this dumb girl's ear and make her see how it felt.

"Noooo!" Ruby cried, followed by a fit of giggles before she poofed into a swirl of petals and rematerialized on the other side of the table.

"Ruby, get back here." Weiss edged around the table and Ruby mirrored her.

"No!" she squeaked, a big dumb smile on her face that was still visible behind the tiny fists she held up to her mouth.

"If I have to come over there, you're going to be sorry."

Ruby lowered her fists and said, "Pbbt, you can't catch me!" then raised them again, lips and eyes smiling.

Weiss could catch Ruby, right? If she used her glyphs right and caught her when she was rematerializing, it was possible. Or maybe she could be sneaky… Plus, Weiss was _Weiss_. If she couldn't figure out a way to catch this little gremlin then what was she even doing here?

She huffed and moved to sit down, trying to pretend to relax so Ruby would too.

Ruby wasn't falling for the bait, though. She stayed at the opposite corner of the table, fists covering her smile, and watched Weiss.

Weiss looked down at her feet. "Oh look, you broke my heel," she lied.

"What?!" Ruby zipped over as a petal cloud. "Ho-"

"Aaagh!" Weiss growled as she dove forward to tackle her partner. Unfortunately, Weiss didn't weigh too much and the tackle didn't have a whole lot of power behind it, so it just ended up with Weiss having her arms wrapped around a squealing Ruby and pushing her backwards.

"You little-" Ruby got out before deciding to try to semblance away.

The squishiness of a human being disappeared from Weiss' arms, and she was left holding what felt like a living hardlight barrier, solid and immutable. There was a transparent reddish-pink silhouette of Ruby in front of her, slightly obscured by the rose petals that kept popping up in the empty space around her.

It was weird.

Ruby tugged-or at least, Weiss thought she did, but it was so weak it was almost imperceptible. Right, Ruby said she affected the world less when she was in her "Rose Form". Why did she think she'd be able to escape like this?

The answer became clear when Ruby tugged again. It was just enough to get Weiss' hands to bend a little, and suddenly Ruby slipped away. There was almost no friction on her at all!

Petals whirled and Weiss spun around to find Ruby standing behind the couch.

"You said your heel was broken!" she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Weiss.

Weiss shrugged. "I thought it was!"

"No you didn't!"

"I wanna play tag too!" Nora yelled suddenly, jumping from her barstool and leaping at Ruby.

The leap wasn't far or high enough though, and she ended up landing on the top of the couch with an "Oof!"

Ruby blinked down at her. "Uh."

"I leave for a _minute_ and this place is a circus!" Yang said from the hallway entrance with a wave of her arms.

"Weiss is a liar!" Ruby chirped. The accusation somehow didn't sting or feel at all insulting to Weiss when it came from that voice.

"You screamed a made-up word in my ear!"

"At least I'm a… truther!"

"That's a made-up word too!"

Ruby blew a raspberry at her, then zoomed down to their room.

"What did you do, Weiss?" Yang asked with a chuckle.

"What did _I_ do? She _screamed_ in my ear like a… like a..."

"Barbarian?" Pyrrha offered.

"Yes!"

"Hm," Yang said as she walked to the kitchenette and slipped past Ren to get at the coffee pot. "That doesn't sound _anything_ like Ruby."

"I-b-what?!" Weiss sputtered. That sounded _exactly_ like Ruby!

"I'm kidding, Weiss."

"Oh. Right."

"So when are you guys heading to the game?" Yang asked Ren and his teammates sitting at the counter.

"Twelve thirty-ish, prolly," Jaune said.

"Message me when you're going?"

"We could just knock on your door," Ren said as he slid a pancake on top of a pile of a billion others. "Nora!" he called over to the lump still sprawled over the couch. "Come get your-"

"Pancakes!" Nora shouted, jumping up and rushing to the counter, digging in before she'd fully finished sitting down.

'_Even Nora knows what the _actual _word is.'_

"True," Yang admitted.

"I don't think I have your scroll ID anyway," Jaune said, pulling out his scroll to check.

"Oh! That's not good. It's Dragon Fist Nine Thousand XXX. Capital D, capital F."

Jaune nodded as he typed, then Yang's scroll dinged.

"Gotcha, Arc Knight Seven. I like it."

Jaune shrugged. "I'm the seventh kid in my family."

"Oh yeah?" Yang said with a grin. "I'm the nine thousandth in mine!"

"Are your parents rabbits or something?"

"Dragon bunnies," she replied with a serious nod.

"Hm." Jaune turned to look at Weiss, then looked nervously away. "So, uh, Weiss. Maybe it would be good if, like, we had your ID too… for, like, emergencies… or, uh… yeah."

Weiss blinked. "No."

She turned and headed to the room.

"Oof," she heard Yang say. "Nice try, killer." She pitched her voice higher and called around the corner after Weiss, "That's fine! I'll clean the table up too!"

Weiss froze, then walked back to the corner to peek at Yang. "Am… am _I _supposed to do that? I-I've never…"

Yang deadpanned. "Oh right. Princess, I forgot. You've probably had an army of butlers cleaning up after you all your life, huh."

"We have _one_ butler, and I'm a very clean person anyway!"

"Hmph. Alright, whatever." Yang waved a hand toward their room to dismiss Weiss. "I'll clean up. Just make sure the Rubester isn't bothering Blake. Oh! And can you bring Blake her coffee?" Yang turned and grabbed the thermos of coffee she'd poured and stretched to hand it to Weiss over the counter.

"Oh! Uh, sure."

Weiss silently hoped Blake wouldn't just throw the coffee in her face.

When she grabbed the thermos, Yang kept a hold on it. "Hey."

"What?"

"No fighting."

"I'm not _looking_ f-"

"Stop! Shush!" The tone Yang used was gentle enough that Weiss didn't feel like it was an attack. "I'm not criticizing you or trying to argue. I'm just asking you to please avoid fighting with her, okay? Just do your best."

"... Okay."

Yang gave her a smile and a nod, and Weiss walked away with the warm thermos in her hands.

Back in the room, Blake as laying on her bed on her back, hands behind her head, while Ruby sat at the edge of her bed and bounced up and down excitedly and waved her hands around as she jabbered on about Ruby Nonsense.

"... can trade with Atlas to get robosoldiers and Chariots once the Atlas player unlocks them, and once you have those you can wipe out the bandits and then you'll have access to a lot more resources. Oh, and if you sign a nonaggression pact with Vacuo you can build faunus militias, and they're pretty good early game. And if you trade with Vale you can get an extra huntsman team-which is good 'cause Mistral only has one. So you kinda want to either take out Atlas early with faunus militias, and then nobody has to worry about Atlas going into super lategame and you just need to deal with Vale, or you can-"

"Ruby?" Weiss piped up.

"Oh, hey! What's up?" Apparently she'd already forgotten to pretend to be grumpy about Weiss not being a 'truther' about her heels.

"Maybe give Blake some space?"

"Okay!" She hopped off Blake's bed, then darted to her side of the bookshelf and pulled out a large, colorful box that read "Four Kingdoms: Conquest" and plopped it on the floor in the middle of the room. "I'll start setting up!" she announced happily as she started unpacking a large map of Remnant and colored game pieces.

Weiss walked over to Blake and held out the thermos, doing her best not to look nervous-not that she was nervous! She just didn't want to look like she was. Because she wasn't.

"Special delivery from Yang," she said quietly.

Blake opened her eyes and glanced sideways at Weiss for a long moment (in which Weiss pointedly looked not nervous), then at the thermos.

"...nks," she mumbled, reaching out for it.

"Hm?"

Blake rolled her eyes. "I said 'thanks'," she said louder, almost aggressively.

"Oh! S-sorry. You're welcome."

Crap, why had Weiss said sorry? She didn't have anything to apologize for. Well, she'd made Blake repeat herself, but that wasn't terrible. And she'd mumbled!

She walked away numbly.

"Is Yang coming?" Ruby asked, looking up at Weiss from where she sat cross-legged on the floor.

"Yeah, she's putting the dishes away."

"Oh! I'll go help! Be right back!"

"Don't-"

She was already gone.

'_Crap.'_

The silence that settled over the room with just Weiss and Blake in it felt so heavy and palpable, Weiss felt almost smothered. She crossed the room and sat at the edge of her bed, counting the seconds until Ruby came back.

Why did this silence feel so uncomfortable? Weiss loved silence! Was there something wrong with her that she was praying for Ruby to come back and ramble about anything and everything just to kill this terrible quiet? Was she already suffering from overexposure to her partner? Or was it Blake's fault?

It was probably Blake's fault.

Blake wasn't even looking at her-making a point _not_ to, in fact-but Weiss for some reason felt that creepy crawly sensation she got across her skin when the paparazzi harassed her. Like she was somehow doing something wrong, like her back should be straight or her crown was crooked or her dress was too wrinkled.

Twenty seconds passed. Then thirty. Then forty.

How long did it take to put away dishes?

It was too much.

"So, you're playing as Mistral, I take it?" she said. It was a relief to just throw a sound out into the air. She could have spouted a bunch of gibberish and she would have felt good just for breaking that stifling silence. Maybe that's how Ruby felt too…

She waited a moment for Blake to answer. She was probably thinking about how to respond. Things were awkward between them, so it might take unusual amounts of thought and consideration before Blake settled on a good answer.

She waited.

And waited. Blake tilted her head up and sipped her coffee.

Fifty. Sixty.

Was Blake just not going to respond?

Seventy.

She wasn't.

That was obnoxious. Weiss was actually trying to be sociable-something she was not good at, comfortable with, or even normally inclined to do-and Blake was just throwing it in her face. There was nobody else in the room for Blake to claim she hadn't realized Weiss was talking to her, and Weiss had spoken loud enough to be heard, so… so Blake was just ignoring her.

'_I'm just asking you to please avoid fighting with her, okay?'_ Yang's voice rang in her head. '_Just do your best.'_

Weiss bit her tongue and calmed down. Whatever. If Blake was going to be petty like this, it just meant Weiss was the bigger person.

Ruby burst in at that moment in a flurry of petals and Weiss let out a quiet sigh of relief. "Alright, Team RWBY!" She paused and looked behind her. "Wait, we're just Team RWB. Yang, where'd you go?"

"I'm right here!" Weiss heard the girl answer from down the hall. "Moving at normal human speed."

"Pfft. That's dumb," Ruby said to herself. "Weiss, c'mere! I'll show you how Atlas works! I already coached Blake, so now it's your turn." She skipped over and sat down beside the game board and patted the carpet next to her.

Weiss was going to have to sit on the _floor_?

"Ruby," Blake said quietly, "I absorbed _maybe_ four of the words you said. And two of them were my name."

"Oh. Well, that's okay! Yang can help you."

"Or I could abuse the newbie and win," Yang said with a smile as she sat down.

"Yang-uh!"

"Kiddiiiiiiiing!"

Ruby rolled her eyes, then turned to Weiss and smiled again, patting the floor next to her.

'_Guess I'm sitting on the floor.'_

Weiss came over and sat next to Ruby. They were at the top of the map, on the "Atlas side", so they were looking at Remnant upside down. The map itself was very simplified, each kingdom and the Crucible a different color and divided by lines to make different regions, a cartoony icon in each region that must represent some type of game resource or something. Ruby had arranged the pieces that Weiss guessed were going to be her army-a dozen little blue soldiers; eight blue Knights (the old 130 models); four Cavaliers, the exosuits in blue while the soldiers inside them were a light grey to make them visually distinguished; four Chariots with transparent plastic stands to add height and make them look like they were flying; and one Dragon, the massive flagship model almost as big as the regions on the map. There were also four figures off to the side, gender neutral and each wielding a different weapon, and they were each as tall as the Cavaliers even though they didn't have any exosuits. Weiss guessed they represented a huntsman team.

Yeah, Atlas is awesome.

"Ok!" Ruby squeaked excitedly, giving one of her happy little wiggles as Weiss sat down. "So at the start of the game you just have six soldiers."

"Aw."

Ruby let out a giggle and patted Weiss' knee. "Don't worry! You'll get the bigger things. Each kingdom has a really different playstyle and plan. Yours is about researching tech by allocating resources you accumulate over your turns so you can unlock and build your better units."

Weiss blinked. That was a sophisticated sentence with much bigger words than Weiss would have ever expected from Ruby.

Ruby continued, "So Atlas is divided into four regions-Atlas Academy, Mantle, Boreal Plains, and the Frost Teeth."

Weiss nodded. She was more than familiar with the regions in the real world, and they seemed like sensible divisions for the game.

"So Atlas Academy is your capital. If you lose it, you lose the game. It gives you one research point per turn, and an extra one per turn for every three units you have in it. That's what this little icon means" Ruby pointed at the icon in the Atlas Academy region that had a 3 and a little stick figure person, then a slash and a beaker with blue liquid in it. She looked over at Weiss to check if she was following, and Weiss gave her a small nod to signal she was. "Mantle gives you one steel per turn, and an extra one for every two units you have in it." The icon for that was a 2 followed by a stick figure, slash, and a little steel ingot. There was also a big red stick figure in the region, surrounded by a hexagon.

"What's that mean?" Weiss asked, pointing.

Ruby gave her a smile and let out another happy wiggle. "It means you have to control Mantle to be able to recruit units."

"What? Why?"

Ruby shrugged and hummed an 'I don't know.'

"The Atlas military pretty much all trains in Atlas City," Weiss said.

Ruby shrugged again. "I think it's just a game balance thing, then. It's really hard to take Atlas 'cause it has a big defense bonus 'cause… ya know, it's a _flying city_, so they gave the other factions an objective to take to cut off your reinforcements."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense. It's still wrong though."

Ruby grinned and bumped her shoulder against Weiss'. "Anyway, Boreal Plains give you Dust. Two for every unit." There was a 2, stick figure, slash, and a little pile with a blue, red, and yellow Dust crystal.

"What kind of Dust?" Weiss asked.

"Oh, it's random. You draw from the Dust deck." Ruby pointed at a stack of cards with the same pile-of-crystals icon printed on their backs. "If you look at the stat cards for your different units, it'll show you what each of them can do with the three different Dust types."

"Only three?"

Ruby shrugged again. "It's a good system. Too many would make the game too complicated."

Weiss wanted to grumble about how it was inaccurate, but she got distracted looking at the stat cards Ruby indicated.

Atlas Soldier

Health: 1

Attack: +1

Defense: 3

[Red Dust]: +2 Attack this turn (must use before rolling your attack).

[Blue Dust]: +1 Defense this turn (must use before enemy rolls attack).

[Yellow Dust]: You may reroll an Attack roll for this unit.

"So huntsman can use as much Dust as you want to dump on them each turn, but other units can only use one per turn. And your Chariots and Dragon, once you get them, cost a Dust each turn to, like, fuel them or whatever, and if you don't pay that then they can't do anything that turn and their Defense stat is zero for the round."

"I don't know what any of these stats mean," Weiss lamented as she flipped through all the different cards. They all had a Health, Attack, and Defense, but Weiss didn't know what that meant other than the obvious definitions of the words.

"Don't worry!" Ruby chirped, bumping her shoulder again. "We'll get there. Real quick, though, you've also got the Frost Teeth." Weiss looked over at the mountain range along Atlas' southwest coast. "So having at least two units here gives you the resource bonus each turn, which is one research point or one Dust, your choice each turn."

Weiss squinted at the icon and noticed that there was a little + next to the 2, and there was a = instead of a slash after the stick figure. "So no extra resources for having more than two units there?"

"Yep!" Ruby agreed with a big smile.

"So would I ever put more there?"

Ruby nodded. "Depends! So the Frost Teeth are big, cold, terribru mountains, right? So any units attacking into the region get a -2 to attack rolls, so it's really easy to defend. And you'll want to defend it 'cause it's the fastest way for Vacuo to reach you-" she pointed at a dotted line that ran across the oceans, connecting the Frost Teeth region to the Paradise Downs region on Vacuo's northeastern cost. "And also because every few turns the Grimm surge from the Crucible!" She said the last part in a 'deep' sport event announcer voice, and indicated a thick black arrow that pointed from the Crucible to the Frost Teeth.

"There are Grimm?"

Ruby's eyes lit up. "Yeah! I haven't gotten to unpack them yet. Check 'em out!" She pushed herself up and crawled over to the box to pull out a plastic tray with little figurines inset in it. She got out three and crawled back over to Weiss.

"Look at the Beowolf! It's so tiny and adorable!" She held up one of the models and Weiss took it gently in her hands. Tiny? Yes. Adorable? Ehhhh. It looked like a strikingly accurate model Beowolf, snarling teeth, hackles up, armor plating painted a stark white that contrasted unnaturally (but realistically) with its black fur.

"We call 'em Puppowolves," Yang remarked absently with a small smile. She was sitting across from Weiss, setting up the red-orange Vacuo pieces and her unit cards. But wasn't that spot where the Vale player would sit? The Vacuo player should be on the "west" side of the board, not the "south".

"Yeah, that's what Mom called 'em so they wouldn't freak us out when we were little," Ruby reminisced. Her gaze went far away for a moment, but then she shook head and focused back on the models in her hand. "And check out the King Taijitu!" she said, sounding _more_ happy and enthusiastic than she had before. It seemed genuine, but it must be a forced cheeriness, but…

Just how much of Ruby's smiles were forced? They didn't seem to be, but she was evidently good at hiding it…

The model Grimm that Ruby plopped into Weiss' hands was enough to distract her. It was a good likeness of the monster.

"Snek!" Yang said.

"Sneeeeeeeek!" Ruby agreed.

Weiss rolled her eyes at her idiot teammates. "These are neat," she said. "So how do they work?"

Ruby gave another little wiggle. "Yeah! So at the start of every round we reveal the top three cards in the region deck-" she pointed at a stack of cards with a tiny globe of Remnant icon on the back "-then flip the top three cards of the Grimm deck." She pointed at a deck with a cartoonish Beowolf on the back.

'_Why are there so many decks?'_

"So, like, I'll show you." Ruby flipped over the top three cards in the region deck. Mantle, the Everglades, and Burglar's Forest. "Okay, so you're getting one Grimm spawn in your kingdom this turn, and Blake's getting two."

"Aw," Blake said, deadpan.

"Yeah," Ruby agreed seriously. "If they're tough Grimm it can be really annoying to deal with. So let's see what kind spawn." She flipped over the top three cards of the Grimm deck, putting each card on to one of the regions. A King Taijitu on Mantle, a Beowolf on the Everglades, and an Ursa in Burglar's Forest. Each card showed the stats of the monster on it.

"Okay, so Blake got lucky," Ruby said.

"Oh really?" Yang grinned. "When did that happen?"

A pillow flew into her face from the left. Over on her bed, Blake was still casually laying there with her eyes closed, though one of her pillows seemed to be missing.

"Uh. I don't get it," Ruby said.

"You don't have to," Weiss consoled her, shooting Yang a glare as the girl pulled the pillow off her face and placed it in her lap. "Continue."

"Okay! So like I said, Blake got lucky-"

Yang snickered, then another pillow flew into her face, this time making her rock back slightly.

"Crap," Blake muttered. "Help, I'm out of pillows."

"Gee, I wonder how that happened," Yang teased.

"Same."

"Come down here and join us, Blakey-Blake!" Yang patted the ground by her, on the "east" side of the board. "You gotta do the learn!"

"Will you give me my pillows back?"

"Oh, these floofy things that slammed into my face out of nowhere? Sure, I suppose."

Blake heaved out a deep, dramatic sigh. "... Fine."

She rolled out of bed, grabbed her coffee, then laid down so that her head was beside the board. Yang stacked her pillows together and slid them under Blake's head.

"How's the coffee?" Yang asked, reaching over to give Blake's upper arm a friendly rub.

"Good," Blake answered with a grateful smile. "I mean, it tastes awful and tea is way better, but you were right about it helping with the headache."

Yang smiled and shrugged. "I'll take it!"

"An. Y. Wayyyy!" Ruby grumbled.

Yang waved a hand at her. "Right, sorry. Please tell us more about how Blake got lucky."

Blake kneed Yang in the butt, which prompted a laugh from the inappropriate blonde buffoon.

Ruby turned her big questioning eyes to Weiss, but Weiss just shook her head.

"So the Ursa and Beowolf are easy to deal with?" she prompted, hoping that would keep her dolt partner from repeating the phrase that Yang the Idiot couldn't seem to get past.

"Yeah! Beowolves are pretty easy to kill. There are a lot of cards in the Grimm deck with _two_ Beowolves, some with three, and those are tougher, especially for the dinky early game soldiers. Ursai are a bit harder to kill, but not too bad. King Taijitu are hard, but you only had the one spawn, and it's in Mantle, where you probably have a lot of units."

Weiss nodded. Made sense, but…

"What does this have to do with the Crucible though?"

"So!" Ruby scooted around a bit and got a few more Grimm pieces out, placing them in the Crucible. "Every ten turns there will be a big wave of Grimm that come out from the Crucible and land on these regions." She pointed at the four different regions that had bold black arrows pointing to them from the Crucible.

"But how does a Beowolf swim to Mistral from there?"

"I 'unno. It's a game, Weiss."

"Fine."

Ruby stuck her tongue out at her partner, then continued. "The wave gets bigger and bigger each time. By turn fifty it can actually get pretty unbeatable. Unless you're Atlas and you have the flagship." She pointed at the model of the Dragon sitting next to Weiss' knee. "Then you can just kinda nuke most of the Grimm on the ground and just have to worry about the Nevermores."

"Did you say turn _fifty_?" Blake asked in disbelief.

"Yep!"

"Ruby," Weiss groaned, "how long is this gonna take?"

"You mean how long is this gonna _last_?" Yang said again.

"Hours!" Ruby said with a super cheeriness that Weiss wanted to shake out of her.

'_Ugh.'_

At least since they started talking about this board game Ruby hadn't drifted off staring at her hands again. If there was one good thing to come out of this nonsense it was that Ruby wasn't focusing on how she'd watched people get killed last night.

Weiss vaguely wondered why she was handling it so well. She'd been actively not thinking about it-because if she did her stomach turned and her palms got clammy-to great effect. She was mostly just worried about Ruby.

'_Just sit through this board game, Weiss. Be a good teammate.'_

"But yeah. Big Grimm waves every ten turns. So that's a big reason for you to have troops in the Frost Teeth."

"But what do the Grimm do if they take that region?" Weiss asked. "I assume you don't get the resources from it anymore, but what if it would take more troops than it's worth to take it back?"

Ruby nodded excitedly. "Good question! So at the start of each round, if there are Grimm already in a region, they'll move to another random region adjacent to it."

"How do you determine which way they go?"

Ruby gave one of her shrugs. "Dice rolls," she answered simply.

"So if there are ten Grimm in the Frost Teeth, the next turn it's likely that five will attack Mantle and five will attack the Boreal Plains?"

Ruby nodded.

"So would it be better for me to wait for them to attack so I only have to fight five at a time?"

Ruby's eyebrows scrunched up. "Yeah, I suppose so. Although then your forces are split too, whereas you could attack the ten in the Frost Teeth with both armies together."

"Mm. Okay, neat."

Darn, Weiss had started saying "neat" a lot.

"Or if you have good action cards in your hand, you can just use those," Yang added.

'_Great, _more _cards.'_

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed. "Like, there's are two copies of a card in the deck called 'Lightbomb', which is a big explosion of white Dust that kills all Grimm in a region."

"That's not a thing," Weiss quibbled.

Ruby shrugged and opened her mouth to respond, but Weiss cut her off. "Right, right. It's a game, I know."

Yang finished setting up her pieces on the side of the board and started on Blake's. Blake watched her, face impassive but her eyes kept flicking up to Yang's face.

"Rubes, you're forgetting the most important rule," Yang admonished.

"I am?" Ruby frowned at her.

Grinning, Yang nodded and gave Ruby a look like she should know what her sister was talking about. "Remember? Rule number _one_ of Conquest combat?"

Ruby let out a loud gasp. "Oooooooooooh! Right!" She turned to Weiss and put on an extra serious face that she probably thought made her look authoritative, but it was mostly just adorable. "Okay, Weiss. Listen up. Rule number one!" She held up a little finger. "Rule number one whenever you're in a battle."

Weiss narrowed her eyes suspiciously. There shouldn't be this much extravagance for a normal rule. That plus the fact that _Yang_ had brought it up made Weiss suspect whatever her dolt partner was about to say probably wasn't a real rule.

"You have to make 'pew pew' noises for your soldiers."

Weiss blinked. "... What?"

A tiny smile kept twitching the corners of Ruby's lips, but she did her best to fight it down and keep the serious face-she failed, but it was an admirable attempt. "Yeah!" She picked up one of Weiss' Atlas soldiers and danced him around on the board. "You know, 'Ahhh, shoot that Grimm!' Pew pew pe-pew!"

Weiss crossed her arms. "Is that _really_ a rule?"

"Mhm!" Ruby nodded vigorously and her voice was hitched up an octave higher than usual.

"So if we looked at the rulebook right now it would say 'Players must make 'pew pew' noises in combat'?"

Yang let out a loud snort that turned into a laugh.

"_What?_" Weiss demanded.

Yang shook her head. "Nothing. Just… hearing Ice Queen say 'pew pew' is kinda hilarious."

Weiss huffed. "It's your own fault for bringing up your ridiculous made up rule!"

"It's not made up, Weiss!" Ruby protested. "It's in the rulebook!"

Weiss leveled a disbelieving glare at her partner. "Really? Can I see it?"

Ruby scrunched up her nose. "Uh, no. I, uh, ate it."

"... You ate it."

"I meeeean… Zwei ate it!"

"Ruby, weren't you just yelling at me for not being a truther?"

Yang snorted again, but Weiss ignored her and kept glaring at Ruby.

Next to her, Ruby fidgetted. "Uh, I guess."

Weiss wasn't sure what there was to guess about. It had _just_ happened minutes ago. She pressed on, though.

"And didn't you tell me your parents always told you to tell the truth."

Realizing the hole she was in now, Ruby gave Weiss one of _those_ pouts. "Yeaaaah…."

"And are you being a truther now?"

Ruby looked down at the little model soldier in her hand. "... Noooo…."

Weiss put on her best disapproving frown.

Ruby let out a sigh. "Fiiine. You don't have to pew pew," she said sadly.

"Ruby! No!" Yang argued.

Weiss and Ruby both blinked at her, and Yang turned to Weiss grumpily. "No, it's not a _rule_ rule in the rulebook."

"So it's not a rule."

"It's a house rule!"

"A what?"

"It's, like, a made up rule that everyone in the group agrees to. The Rose-Xiao-Long house has lots of 'em! And you gotta follow them or you suck."

"But I'm not agreeing to say 'pew pew' like an idiot!"

"Then you suck!"

"Wei-eiss," Ruby whined. "It's so much fun! I promise!"

It made no sense that making stupid noises somehow made the game more fun.

But…

Ruby was giving Weiss those damn puppy dog eyes.

…

'_Damn it.'_

"Fine," she huffed, looking away. "But just know that I hate you and you're dumb."

"Woohoooo!" Ruby cheered, tackling her with a hug.

"Ruby! Get off me!"

"Ssssshhhhhhhh," Blake hissed, curling up into a ball away from them.

Ruby pushed herself back up to a sitting position and scooted on her butt over to the west side of the board, then frown and looked at her sister.

"Uh, Yang? You're in my spot."

Yang waved a hand at her. "Nah, we can both still reach our pieces, and I wanna sit next to Blake."

Ruby's nose scrunched up. "But Vale sits across from Atlas!"

"It's fiiiiine, Rubes. It's a little bit of reaching over, but it means I get to sit next to Blakey-Blake and you get to sit next to Ice Queen."

Weiss glared at Yang when she used that annoying nickname, but Ruby's face lit up and she looked over.

"That's true!"

She scooted back over to be closer to Weiss, inching across the carpet on her butt like an invalid. Weiss rolled her eyes.

Ruby leaned over and whispered, "Don't worry, Weiss. Yang's gonna try to blitz you, but I'll help you out."

"Hey!" Yang cried, pointing a finger at her little sister's face. "I heard that! No conspiratorializing!"

"That's _not_ a word," Weiss sighed.

"Is too! Right, Blakey-Blake?" Yang turned to her partner who gave her a long, slow blink.

"Sure."

Yang smiled triumphantly at Weiss.

'_Sigh,'_ she thought to herself.

"Alright!" Ruby said in an announcer voice. "Everybody prepare yourselves for the first ever Team RWBY: Conquest!" She pumped a fist in the air.

'_What am I doing?' _Weiss wondered.

* * *

**Sorry for the late update! Got sidetracked actually designing Four Kingdoms: Conquest. I studied game design at university, so it was fun to go back and do the thing I really love for a bit. If the board game ended up taking up too much of the chapter, I'm sorry. It's just a passion of mine.**  
**Hope you liked the fluff!**


	24. Thaw 2-8

"Wei-eisss! Don't be grumps!"

Weiss crossed her arms and grumped. Like, _hardcore_ grumpy frown.

"I'm not grumps! What does that even mean?!"

"It means that," Ruby said, poking her partner's cheek, making the girl frown even deeper.

With an indignant huff, Weiss pushed her hand away. "If you say something stupid about my face again-"

"Your face is grumps!" Yang blurted with a big grin. "Now quit bein' a sore loser and give Blake your Dust cards!"

Grumpily glaring down at the game board that was now devoid of blue Atlas pieces and where Blake's pieces stood triumphant on her capital, Weiss silently and sullenly passed her substantial stack of Dust cards to Blake.

"This game is stupid," she pouted.

"Noooo!" Ruby cried, diving around the board to give Weiss an awkward hug to console her. She'd _really_ wanted Weiss to have fun so they could keep playing this together.

"Get off me you dolt!" Weiss griped, though the light push she gave with her elbow seemed half-hearted, so Ruby kept holding on.

"I just wanted you to have funnnn!"

"Yeah, well getting brutally murdered by everybody from the very start isn't fun at all."

Yang rolled her eyes and turned back to her pieces while Blake began organizing her new cards in her hand, casually smirking about something.

"_I _didn't brutally murder you!" Ruby protested. "I tried to help!"

"You _gave_ Blake the huntsmen she needed to kill me!" Weiss retorted, this time elbowing Ruby more forcefully. Ruby let go sadly and straightened up.

"I didn't know she'd just rush you with them!" Ruby ended the sentence with a glare at Blake, but Blake was too busy reordering the cards in her hand and looking satisfied with herself to notice.

Ruby _had_ tried to save Weiss once she'd realized what was happening, but Yang attacked her and she had to devote too many resources to stopping her to really help. Except she'd tried to ignore Yang's attack and save Weiss anyway and lost part of Vale for it. Even begging and her patented puppy dog eyes hadn't been able to get Yang to back off. What was she supposed to do when even puppy dog eyes didn't work?!

To Blake's credit, she'd played it really well. If she hadn't had to ask for clarification on so many rules, Ruby would think she'd played this game before with how well she'd managed her resources while attacking Weiss.

And Weiss, who'd been enjoying herself building a little Dust empire up at the top of the world by herself (after repelling Yang's obligatory blitz attack in the first three turns), had panicked as soon as Blake's troops hit her shores and threw everything at the invasion. Some unlucky dice rolls and an action card from Blake led to Weiss' army getting wrecked _and_ her economy was left ruined, so she couldn't rebuild in time to save herself.

Not that Ruby would ever tell Weiss she'd messed up. At least not when she was this upset. And Ruby was kind of upset too. This was supposed to be a fun, friendly first game for Weiss and Blake to get them into it! Like, sure, they're all playing to win, but… Blake didn't have to do _that_.

And Ruby had a nagging feeling that Blake's decision to blitz Weiss was motivated by this whole faunus fight they were having rather than an actual strategic gameplay decision. Especially considering now that Atlas was gone, there was no way for Blake to get their powerful end game units, so once Ruby curbstomped Yang the Buttface she'd be able to roll over Blake easily.

"Yeah, well, she did," Weiss sputtered after a moment. "And Yang gave her those ridiculous faunus mi-"

"Hey," Blake cut her off.

Weiss' eyes went wide and she backpedaled. "I-I just meant ridiculous as in ridiculously strong! I-I didn't mean… I meant...I-"

"It's okay, Weiss," Yang reassured her, cutting off her rambling. Blake turned and raised an eyebrow at her partner, but Yang shot her a pointed glare and Blake rolled her eyes and went back to her cards.

Weiss, eyes wide and alarmed, didn't seem convinced. She was also clearly still upset.

"I'm sorry," Ruby said. "If you'd been able to get your Cavaliers up in time you coulda fought off the fff-the militias."

"But she attacked me too fast!"

Weiss was getting way more upset about this than Ruby had expected her to. She'd thought Weiss didn't really care about the game and was just playing along to appease her, but…

Maybe Weiss had really been having fun?

Which made this even worse, because with how things were now she would leave with the memory of being upset and eliminated and not want to play again. But should Ruby tell her she messed up? Maybe if Weiss knew she'd lost because she'd made a mistake and not because the game is unbalanced or unfun, then she'd be willing to try again?

But Ruby the Dolt telling Weiss the Genius Princess that she'd messed up seemed… daunting.

"Come play with me!" she chirped. "We can be a team!" She was fairly certain Weiss wouldn't want to, but Ruby wanted her last experience to be dying early. She'd even just let Weiss play as Vale if that made things better! She'd just have to learn a completely new playstyle…

"I don't want to," Weiss mumbled, crossing her arms again.

She wasn't getting up to walk away, though… In fact, she was still looking down at the game board with a slight (cute) pout, and Ruby guessed she was probably thinking back through what had happened to her armies based on the way her narrowed eyes were roaming intently across the map.

"Come on!" Ruby said again, patting the carpet next to her. "You can learn how Vale works!"

"I don't care how Vale works," Weiss sulked.

"Oh my worrrrrd, Weiss," Yang groaned. "Stop being so salty!"

"Sal-what?" Weiss blinked, confused and offended and probably confused about whether or not she should be offended.

"Ignore her," Ruby said, patting the carpet again and giving Weiss what she hoped was an endearing smile. Well of course it was an endearing smile-Mom and Dad had told her she had a magical smile of sweetness (which she'd tried to convince them was a result of eating cookies, so they should feed her more so she'd be extra sweet). But whether or not it was endearing enough for Weiss….

Weiss stared at Ruby for a long moment, her bottom lip slightly askew in her subtle pout, then rolled her eyes. "You're _so_ annoying," she grumbled, scooting over to sit next to Ruby.

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered, giving Weiss another hug that was a lot less awkward 'cause she didn't have to bend around the board.

"I want to do homework," Weiss grumped.

Ruby chuckled and patted her partner on the back. Silly Weiss, _wanting_ to do homework. What a jokester!

…

"Look," Ruby whispered so Buttface wouldn't hear, showing Weiss the two Huntsman Power cards in her hand. "Whatchu think?"

Ruby had had six huntsman trained, though she had five now because Yang the Buttface had killed one, and it had been one of the huntsman on the full team, so now that team leader didn't have his team bonus anymore!

Buttface.

Now she probably needed to get another huntsman trained in Beacon and deployed before Yang's militias and two huntsman made it to Vale City. One of the trainees just needed a power added onto her and one turn to deploy and she was good to go, but both the powers Ruby had to equip on her kinda sucked. One was a power that costed three red Dust to use, which she was in no position to pay right now. She only had one red Dust and one blue, and right now she was getting only the bare minimum one random Dust per turn because she'd moved so many units to try to help Weiss. And the other power card was an ability that only costed one yellow Dust, but was only really useful if she was attacking in another player's kingdom, not defending her own.

'_Ugh.'_

Weiss sighed and gingerly took the cards from Ruby to read them.

"... Deal one damage to up to four enemies sounds good?" she said quietly.

Ruby nodded. It was good, but…

"Nowhere close to three red Dust, though."

"Oh?" Ruby showed her two Dust cards, and Weiss gave a slow nod of understanding. "Oh. Well this one doesn't seem very helpful right now," she said, wiggling the other card a bit.

"Nope!" Ruby agreed happily.

Weiss squinted at her. "So… they both suck?"

"Yep!" Ruby grinned. She was pretty happy that Weiss had figured it out. Not that it was a surprise-Weiss was super smart. But she also wasn't a gamer and used to thinking in gamery ways.

"You seem way too happy about this."

Ruby shrugged, not wanting to explain. "I have a redraw and a draw. Just gotta pray to the RNGoddess."

She looked over at Yang, who was paying _way_ too much attention to where Ruby's troops were placed.

"Look away, Buttface!" she demanded.

Yang raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh, am I 'Buttface' again? Wonderful."

"You've been Buttface before?" Blake asked her.

Yang nodded. "Pretty much any time I attack her first instead of Dad or Uncle Qrow. I become 'Yang the Buttface' for at _least_ a week."

"Buttface!"

"You two are so sweet," Blake remarked dryly, earning a smirk from Yang.

"Quiet, Buttface Helper!" Ruby retorted.

"Oof," Yang chuckled. "Welcome to Clan Buttface, Blake."

Blake wrinkled her nose. "Not sure I like that."

"One of us. One of us," Yang chanted.

These… these buttfaces! They were sitting there laughing and smiling and joking while Weiss was dead and sad!

Grrrr.

They must be taught a lesson!

"Shut up and die, Buttfaces!" Ruby cried, discarding the useless yellow Dust power card and drawing two more dramatically.

'_Well that's crap,'_ she thought, looking at the first card. The second one, though…

"That looks good," Weiss commented, looking at the same card Ruby was, a red Dust ability that granted an attack bonus as long as there were no Grimm in your kingdom, which there weren't.

Ruby grinned and pointed at Yang's stupid nose. "Begone, evil dragon! I will smite you!" She windmill slammed the power card down on top of the training huntress' card, turning her into a trained, level one huntress that she could put on the board.

The big windmill slam meant she was a little inaccurate though, and Weiss straightened out the power card to sit neatly on top of the huntress' template card with an annoyed grumble.

Hiding a smile, Ruby got out the huntresses figurine so she could deploy them next turn while Yang blinked at her, unimpressed.

"Oh no. You have a person that's not even on the board yet," she said, deadpan. "Whatever shall I dooo?"

"Whatever! You're dead, buddy."

"I'm not your buddy, pal," Yang said back with a beaming grin.

"I'm not your pal, friend," Ruby joked back.

"I'm not your friend, gal."

"I'm not your g-"

"Stop, please," Blake interrupted. "I can feel my brain cells melting."

That prompted a snorting laugh from Weiss, who quickly covered her smile with her hand and looked guiltily at Ruby.

Ruby glared at her partner briefly, then turned back to the board. She drew her single Dust for the turn-red Dust. She couldn't use it on anything useful now because her five current huntsmen didn't have any useful red abilities, but next turn! Next turn her new recruit, Hanna Hero, would get her attack bonus twice! Huehuehue!

What she really needed was to take the Lillyreach region back so she could get her extra Dust next turn, but Yang had both her huntsmen and a faunus militia sitting in it being turds. She only had two huntsmen defending her kingdom, and while they were higher level than Yang's huntsmen, Ruby wasn't sure she'd win if she sent them both at Lillyreach.

But screw it! She'd already thrown the gauntlet! She'd gabbered a bunch of gibberish and declared war! There was no turning back now!

"Raaaaah!" she growled, moving her pieces into the region with Yang's. "Fight me, coward!"

"Oh, you did _not _just call me that," Yang huffed, grabbing her dice and squaring her shoulders at Ruby. "You're going down, punk!" She rolled her dice. "Ha! A six!"

Ruby blinked at her. "What are you _doing_? You can just _roll_! You have to name who you're attacking and with who!"

"Whom," Weiss said tiredly.

"You have to name whom you're attacking with whom!" Ruby tried again.

"No, it's-... nevermind," Weiss muttered.

"Whatever!" Yang retorted. "I'm keeping that six though. That's my first roll against yourrr, uh-"

"Noooooo!" Ruby whined. "You can't do that! You have to reroll!"

"I don't wanna!"

"Stop being a cheater, Yang!"

"Your _face_ is a cheater!"

"No it's not!"

Beside her, Ruby heard Weiss sigh loudly.

"I think Blake should settle this!" Yang declared.

"What?" Ruby squeaked. "Why?!" Blake couldn't be the deciding vote! She'd definitely side with Yang! "I think Weiss should settle it!"

"Weiss doesn't get a vote!" Yang argued. "She's dead!"

"Wow, rude," Weiss grumbled.

Blake cleared her throat and everyone looked at her. "I think you should reroll anyway," she said to Yang.

"_What?!_" Yang blurted out. "Whose side are you on?!"

"Uh… the rules', I guess?"

Yang scoffed. "Traitor!" She turned to Ruby and pointed at her nose. "You did this! You turned her against me!"

"You have done that yourself!" Ruby quoted back at her. Then she reached out and grabbed Yang's hand and pulled it in to bite her finger.

It didn't do anything. Yang had her aura up. If anything, it kinda hurt Ruby's teeth.

Yang frowned at her. "Why are you eating me?" she asked.

"I dunno," Ruby answered, though it came out more as "Ah 'urro."

"Could you, like, not?"

Ruby crossed her eyes looking down at the finger she was biting on. She should probably stop biting Yang, but on the other hand… she really wanted a win right now.

She bit down harder. For Weiss!

It didn't do anything against Yang's aura. Poo.

"Weiss is right," Yang teased. "You're a total barbarian."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "You _both_ are. Could you _please_ pull your finger out of her mouth?"

With a sharp jerk, Yang's finger was yanked away. Ruby stuck her tongue out at her buttface sister, which just made the girl chuckle and ruffle Ruby's hair.

"Stoooop!" Ruby whined. "Muh hurrrrr!"

Yang snorted. "Alright! Gary Goodguy is attacking… which one is this one?" She pointed at one of Ruby's attacking huntsman.

"Penny Protector!"

"K. Gary's gonna kill Penny."

"Nuh uh!"

Yang shook a die around a bit, blew on them in her fist, then rolled them on the board, only barely not hitting any pieces.

A two! With Gary's attack bonus, that was only a four, so he missed!

"Ha! Suck it, sucky sucker!" Ruby cheered.

"You two are absolute wordsmiths," Blake sighed.

Weiss let out a dismayed groan at the remark and buried her face in her hands, her pretty ponytail falling over her shoulder. The reaction made Blake smile before she seemed to remember she was mad at Weiss, shooting the girl a quick glare before looking away. Luckily, Weiss didn't notice.

"_You_ suck!" Yang smartly countered.

"Now it's Penny's turn!" Ruby shouted. "Attack the Gary the Buttface, my brave and loyal minion!" She grabbed a die, gave it a big windup, and the chucked it at Yang's face. It bounced off her forehead with a tiny spark of yellow and she watched it with a grumpy frown as it arced down onto the board, then bounced and rolled a bit before landing on… a… SIX!

"Woohoo! The forces of evil buttfacery shall fall today!" Ruby pumped a fist in triumph.

"That should count as _my _roll," Yang huffed.

"What?! Why?!"

"'Cause I touched it last!"

"That doesn't count!"

"Does too!"

"Weiiiiiiiiiiss! Tell her she's being stupid!"

Weiss lifted her face up to make eye contact with Ruby and give her a long, deadpan stare, then let her face fall back into her hands.

"Man, you're no help at all," Ruby grumbled.

"Hah!" Yang smirked. "Blake, I'm right, right?"

"No."

Yang whirled around. "Girl, you suck!" She got up on all fours and crawled over to Blake and threw herself on top of her. "You're supposed-to be-my partner!" she yelled between Blake's cries and giggles of protests and Yang started tickling her.

"No, stop! N-stop it! My head! Ya-YANG stoooooooop!"

Ruby was grinning dumbly at the cuteness until Blake's wiggling attempts to escape Yang's clutches made her hit the gameboard. Figures were knocked over and scattered, and the decks of resource cards that were just beside the board got hit, the top cards sliding of.

"Yang-uh!"

"That wasn't me! That was-ow!" she cut off as one of Blake's flails smacked her in the nose. "That was Blake!"

Blake, now breathless, tried again to push away from Yang, still to no avail. "St...sto-ooop!" she wheezed.

Yang, smiling victoriously, stopped tickling Blake but left her fingertips threateningly on the poor girl's ribs. "So I'm right, right?" she demanded.

"Y-yeah," Blake panted. "S-sure. Whatevvv."

Yang nodded, satisfied and looked over at Ruby smugly.

"I-that doesn't count! She was under duress!" protested Ruby.

"Look at you and your fancy words," Yang grinned. She scooted a bit and laid down next to Blake, who was still on her back desperately trying to get air back in her lungs, and wrapped her arms around her.

Blake squirmed a bit in protest. "No! No more, please."

Yang laughed and shook her head. "No more," she agreed. "These are just apology cuddles. I'm sorry I had to tickle-torture you to make you see the light." She gave Blake a squeeze and rested her cheek on Blake's shoulder, the way she did with Ruby a lot. It was really sweet.

"Oh. Okay," Blake sighed tiredly. "No more tickles."

"No more tickles," Yang assured her.

"Okay. But why are you hugging me?"

"'Cause I wanna!"

Blake sighed, but didn't make any attempt to push Yang away, which was good! Yang loved cuddles, so her partner being okay with them was probably good if Ruby ever wasn't around.

Ruby glanced over at Weiss, who had just finished grumpily straightening the decks of cards and was now standing up all the pieces on the board that had been knocked over.

Ruby started helping her and glanced back over at the Buttfaces. Yang and Blake looked so cute! But… but wait! They had a game to play!

"Yang! Cut the cuddles and get back over here so I can smite you!"

Yang gave her a grumpy face. "But I wanna cuddle."

Crap. That came on suddenly. Yang tended to get moods every once in a while where she really wanted cuddles. Of course, Ruby was always happy to oblige, but they were in the middle of something!

But Mom had told Ruby once that Yang really started wanting hugs and cuddles ever since her birth mom left, and that Ruby should always give her a hug whenever she needed it so she knew she was loved. So of course Ruby always did! Maybe cuddles with Blake worked too.

Hmm…

"Well… I guess I just win by default then!" she decided.

"You'll win my fist in your face," Yang threatened with a playful glare.

Ruby rolled her eyes and scooted over to where Yang had been sitting.

"Hey!" Yang said, pointing a finger at Ruby. "No lookin' at my cards, you little hoodlum!"

"I'm not!" Ruby replied. "I'm just marking the damage on Gary!" She put a little damage marker on the huntsman. Only one more hit on him!

"Oh. Okay, fine."

"She's a hoodlum, now?" Blake asked, side-eying Yang.

"Yeah! 'Cause she's got a hood!"

Blake's eyebrows twerked up. "You know that's not what that word means, right?"

Yang blinked. "Really? What's it mean?"

"It means… you know what? Nevermind. I like your version better." Blake gave Yang a smile and patted the hand that was resting on her ribs, getting a big smile from Yang.

"Don't just let her make up definitions," Weiss grumbled, sitting back as she finished righting the last fallen piece.

Blake regarded her coldly for a long moment, and Weiss turned skittish and looked away. Yang gave Blake a pointed squeeze, and Blake finally relaxed a little bit and responded, "I dunno. I think Ruby being a hoodlum because her cloak has a hook is kinda cute."

Weiss' eyes went wide in surprise and she did that thing where she froze, like if she made any sudden movements she'd get yelled at or something. Her gaze darted around, pretty much everywhere but at Blake, and finally settled on Ruby.

Ruby gave her a big smile that she tentatively returned.

"I suppose it is pretty cute," she agreed quietly, though Ruby wasn't sure if she really meant that or if she was just agreeing to make Blake happy.

Whatever the case, Blake accepted the agreement with a casual nod. "You know, Yang," she said, "we should start a dictionary with all your and Ruby's ridiculous words."

"A Yangtionary?" Yang asked.

"No," Blake said flatly. "That's horrible."

"Awww."

"A Ruby...tionary?" Ruby attempted.

"No," Weiss shot her down.

Ruby and Yang both pouted at each other.

"Just get this fight over with and kill Yang, please," Weiss sighed.

"Hey!"

Ruby grinned and tossed a die over to Yang that landed on Blake's stomach. Blake looked down at it with a furrowed brow, lower lip puffing out grumpily. "Rude."

"What's it gonna be, Yang?" Ruby challenged. "Want to try and fail to hurt my fearless huntress again, or will you surrender?" The question was mostly just to egg her sister on. Yang never sur-

"I'll never surrender!"

Yeah. That.

"Bring it on, Sist-"

*_Ring ring!*_

Ruby looked at Weiss, whose scroll was buzzing. Weiss blinked at her, then started.

"Oh! Is that me?" Weiss muttered before scrambling around to find her scroll, which was hiding under her skirt.

"Is it the police officer again?" Ruby asked.

"Maybe," Weiss murmured as she pulled the device open. "I'm not sure what…"

She froze and stared at her scroll screen for a long moment, the call still ringing. She swallowed.

"Weiss?" Yang asked. "Who is it?"

"Um…" Weiss answered uncharacteristically.

She was doing the statue thing. Something was wrong.

"Weiss?" Ruby leaned over to see the name. She half expected Weiss to push her away and tell her to it was private, but no push came and Ruby rested her chin on her partner's shoulder and realized what the problem was.

Father.

"Oh."

"What's wrong?" Yang asked, eyes darting between Weiss and Ruby. "Who is it?"

Blake perked her head up a little and frowned at Weiss' scroll, then looked at Weiss in concern.

Weiss didn't answer, so Ruby did for her. "Her dad."

The answer made Weiss look at Ruby, expression blank but Ruby was pretty sure her eyes were slightly wider than normal.

The scroll rang again, and Weiss was jarred into action. She stood, making Ruby tip backwards, and cleared her throat. "Please excuse me, I have to take this," she announced formally.

Ruby reached out and grabbed her partner's hand before she could walk off. "Stay here," she pleaded, activating her puppy dog eye power. Yang was resistant to it now, but Weiss?

Weiss frowned down at her, then glanced worriedly at her scroll. The call was probably going to end soon if she didn't answer…

Ruby tugged lightly on her hand and Weiss sat back down with a roll of her eyes. While Ruby silently celebrated her tiny victory, Weiss straightened out her skirt, composing herself into her Serious Student Weiss mode that she had in class. On the other side of the game board, Yang pushed herself up and gave Ruby a questioning look, like she didn't understand what was going on.

Right. Yang didn't know how weird things were with Weiss and her dad.

Unfortunately, Ruby wasn't in a position to explain right now, so she just shook her head slowly and tried to make a sad face.

Weiss brought the scroll up to her ear, not putting the call on speaker like she had with her sister, and leaned a bit away from Ruby-but she didn't let go of Ruby's hand.

But Ruby wanted to hearrrrr!

"Hello, Father."

The gruff voice that answered her was too muffled for Ruby to understand, but she could hear the anger in the man's tone and volume. That, and Weiss immediately flinched and squeezed Ruby's hand instinctively as soon as her dad started talking.

"No! Fath-"

Weiss flinched again as her dad bulldozed over her.

Ruby gave Weiss' hand a supportive squeeze, but Weiss didn't react. She remained stone-faced, staring at the ground but not really, lips and chin sometimes making small movements as she tried to say something but then changed her mind.

Ruby leaned closer to try to hear what JerkDad was saying.

"_... rlfriend?! And it... y opinion?... dacity to even mention _me _in th… cause _you're _strutting around the streets like a whore!" _

Ruby jerked back like she'd been slapped in the face by the words, though Weiss gave no reaction other than a deep trembling breath and holding Ruby's hand ever so slightly tighter.

What the heck kind of a dad talked to his daughter like this? Weiss hadn't even done anything wrong! In fact, she'd done good! She'd stopped a bad guy!

"But she-"

Weiss spun and glared at Ruby, shutting her up instantly and making her flinch back. But Weiss didn't seem angry. More… scared? Her expression even softened and she gave Ruby's hand another squeeze, then shook her head.

Okay. No talking.

"_Not paying for… useless fucking lesbian!"_

Weiss closed her eyes and waited for her dad's rant to end before she said anything. "May I explain?" she asked quietly.

A one syllable response on the other end.

"The article is… the journalist, if you can call him that, is lying. I wasn't out on a date."

"_... why did… plastered on social… to see?"_

"My team and I went out to dinner, and afterwards I wanted to see the statue garden that was nearby and R… my partner came with me." She glanced at Ruby when she was about to say her name. Ruby tried to give her an encouraging smile, but Weiss looked away again before noticing.

"No, then we heard gunshots and… and we ran to help and we stopped a killer!" Weiss said the statement hopefully, forcefully, like maybe it would be good enough to make her dad not mad.

"_Yes, I… ulations on saving criminal scum."_

Whatever hope Weiss had was dashed away with that. She frowned. "B-but we still saved people! And the police captain thanked us! And… and the man we saved was a faunus!" Weiss shot a nervous glance at Blake, who pushed herself up and looked at Weiss coldly.

"_You risked your… and gave… icity for a faunus?!"_

"Well he's…" Weiss blinked at Ruby as she trailed off. "He's a person too," she finished.

Ruby's heart thu-thumped in her chest, and she gave Weiss the biggest smile she'd ever given anyone, _ever_. She looked over at Blake. Her head was cocked to the side and she was regarding Weiss curiously.

"_Need I remind…. ey've done?! Has a week… forget what they do to our family?!"_

Weiss flinched and looked back down to the ground. "No! But-no! It's not bad publicity! It's good publicity!"

"_How is… ood publicity?"_

Weiss rolled her eyes, then jerked her head a bit and shook it, as if to took it back. "Ignore the lie about the… the date! Your daughter personally saved a faunus criminal! That makes the White Fang look even more unjustified in their hate for us! So… that's _good_ publicity, right?"

Blake scoffed as Weiss finished and angrily stood. Yang reached out for her hand to try to stop her, but Blake brushed it off.

On the other end of the line was a thoughtful silence, but Weiss was looking at Blake with wide, almost apologetic eyes.

"_That's true…" _mused JerkDad as the team watched Blake stomp to the door.

"Blake, wait," Yang called out, lurching to her feet to follow.

"_Who was that?" _Weiss' dad demanded.

"N-nobody!" Weiss stammered. "Just my teammates are… going out."

Blake threw the door open as Yang reach her, and she pushed Yang off her as Yang tried to get her to stop. She turned in the doorway and glared at Weiss. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and panted heavily, balling her fists. She was angry.

But apparently she couldn't figure out what to say. She shook her head and turned away from Weiss, to Yang. She said something, too quiet for Ruby to hear, but she say Yang take a step back.

"What did _I_ do?" she whined.

"Nothing!" Blake replied hurriedly. She said something more, something longer that Ruby couldn't hear again, and Yang sighed and nodded, stepping away. Blake walked away and Yang closed the door behind her, sighing and resting her forehead against the pale wood.

What the heck was Ruby supposed to do here? She needed to make sure Blake was okay, but she also needed to make sure Weiss was okay, and it was apparently impossible to do both of those at the same time.

Maybe… stay her with Weiss for this scroll call, then run after Blake?

Dang it, why did even board games have to get ruined by this drama? Maybe Ruby's dream of a big, happy team of BFFs would just never come true. Ruby seemed to be getting along great with Weiss, as impossible as that may have seemed at first, and Yang and Blake got along great despite being complete opposites as far as Ruby could tell, but Weiss and Blake…

Ruby needed to talk to Blake. They hadn't really gotten to know each other all that well yet. She knew Blake liked books and seemed very willing to accept Yang and all her Yanginess pretty easily, and she had a dry sense of humor, but that was about it. Not enough.

"No, just teammates moving around," Weiss said into her scroll. "Yes, it's all four of us in a room."

Ruby leaned in again to hear JerkDad.

"... _telling me I'm paying… you to live in a commune?" _

Weiss shook her head and closed her eyes. "No, it's a dorm room! And it's nice. It's…" She looked at Ruby. "It's certainly taking some getting used to, but it's okay." Her eyes flickered to the door Blake had just stormed out of. "So far," she added under her breath.

Yang walked slowly over and sat next to Ruby cross legged and sighed, giving Weiss a concerned, kinda angry frown.

There was a long pause in the call, and Weiss' eyebrows knit together. "F-Father?"

"_Stop your mewling, girl." _Weiss swallowed and straightened her back a bit. "_... thinking ab… said about publicity…. could spin this." _

The hopeful look came back to Weiss' eyes. "Really?"

"_Yes. Good thinking." _

The compliment made Weiss beam brighter than Ruby had ever seen. "Thank you, sir," she crowed.

Weiss called her dad sir? That felt… reallyreallyreally weird.

"_Hm. I'll have Atlesian… Schnee saving a faunus cr… girl was your teammate?" _

"Yes." Weiss looked at Ruby again and gave her hand a squeeze, managing a small smile. She seemed _way_ less worried than she had before, so that was nice!

"_...need to have… retract the idiocy… daughter is a lesbian."_

Weiss blinked. "W-wouldn't it be better to just ignore it? If we make a big deal about it then that's what th-"

"_Did I ask your opinion, girl?" _

"N-no, sir," Weiss answered, face falling again.

"_Stop stammering!" _

Weiss flinched.

"_Now… reporter that… this slander and… understood?" _

Grimacing, Weiss took a deep breath like she was about to sigh, but held it back. "Yes, sir."

"_Good. Now… class with… chester?" _

White eyebrows shot up, and Weiss blinked at Ruby. "Cardin?"

Ruby blinked back at her. Why was Weiss' dad talking about that total creepzoid?

"_Yes… company expansion… Vale with the Winchesters, and… are classmates." _

"Yes, we're classmates," Weiss said slowly. "Why?"

"_Befriend him." _

Weiss didn't seem at all surprised by the order, just hanging her head in resignation. But it surprised Ruby. She thought everyone should be friends with everyone, of course, but Weiss definitely didn't feel the same. In fact, as fat as Ruby could tell, she was Weiss' only friend. And that had taken a lot of work on Ruby's part. And Weiss had already made it pretty clear that she definitely didn't like Cardin, so there was no way Ruby say them being friends at all.

"But he's-" Weiss started protesting.

"_I'm sorry, did… 'but' to _me_?"_

"N-no, sir!"

"_Stammering!" _

"S-s… Ahem. Sorry. It's just he's a…" Weiss trailed off.

"A buttface?" Ruby offered.

Weiss snorted out a little laugh, the corners of her mouth twitching up ever so slightly before quickly recomposing herself.

"_What was that?"_

"Nothing! Just… he's-Cardin's a cretin man-child."

Oof. That was way meaner than anything Ruby had to say. Weiss _really_ didn't like him, huh?

"_... don't care what you think of… matters is the business. Have you forgotten… parading around the streets?"_

Weiss opened her mouth to protest, then deflated. "No, Father. I haven't forgotten."

"_Then you'll befriend him. I'll… meeting with his mother within the week… tour of the Winchester facilities." _

Weiss scowled at the floor, but the look of resignation was still there. "Yes, sir. Are there talking points you want me to-"

"_Yes. I'll message... documents later today." _

"... Okay."

"_Okay?"_

"I mean-yes, sir. I-I understand."

"_If you stammer… Lady Winchester, she'll think… family of idiots."_

Weiss' grip tightened on Ruby's hands to the point it was kinda starting to hurt. "Sorry, sir. I-"

There was a click from her scroll.

Did her dad just hang up on her in the middle of a sentence?

From the way Weiss blinked and stared in surprise at her scroll screen, he had.

Wow.

Weiss' hand with the scroll fell into her lap, and as she looked at it she seemed to notice that she was still holding Ruby's hands. She let go and moved to pull away, but Ruby didn't let her. She held on to Weiss' hand, and Weiss gave her a one of those "Ruby, you're being dumb" looks.

Ruby pursed her lips and squinted defiantly, and Weiss huffed in amusement before giving her one of those small, sad smiles.

There was a moment of silence.

"Hey, Weiss?" Ruby spoke up eventually.

Weiss smiled. "Yes, Ruby?"

"Your dad's a buttface."

Weiss smiled sadly again and looked down at their hands in silent agreement.

"For freaking real!" Yang blurted from behind Ruby. The other two girls both jumped in surprise at the voice. Ruby had totally forgotten Yang was even here! She hadn't spoken in… a long time! That was definitely not a Yangish thing to do. "Did he really just hang up on you? You didn't even say anything wrong! And why do you have to call him _sir_? That's so… so freaking weird."

"Could you hear him at all?" Ruby asked, tipping her head backwards to look at her big sister upside down.

"Not really," Yang shook her head. "But he sounded really angry."

"Yeah," Weiss agreed with a depressed sigh.

"Is he… _always_ like that?" Ruby asked.

"He…" Weiss trailed off, moving her frown from her hands to the board game that sat forgotten. "No. He's not always that angry."

"But is he always that jerky?" Ruby asked, not even sure if she believed Weiss' hesitant answer anyway.

Weiss smirked a bit. "Yeah… But… But I messed up."

"What? How?" Yang asked.

With a sigh, Weiss continued. "I should have called him before he saw the article. Or, better yet, not let the article happen."

What?

"But… the article was wrong!" Ruby protested. "And you didn't do anything to make it happen!"

"I went out with you," Weiss answered.

"But… there's nothing wrong with that!"

"Apparently there is."

"What? But… but…" Did that mean Weiss didn't want to hang out anymore? That would suck! Ruby really liked hanging out with Weiss.

"That's stupid, Weiss," Yang stated simply.

Weiss bristled. "Excuse me?"

"That's stupid," Yang repeated. "You were out having a nice night with a friend and some stupid jackass decided to lie about it. That's not your fault."

Weiss looked back down at her and Ruby's hands. Ruby gave them a wiggle, then another when the first failed to get her to look up. She did, and Ruby gave her a smile.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," Weiss answered reflexively, and Ruby knew she wasn't.

"What was that crap about Cardin?" Yang asked.

Weiss rolled her eyes at that. "Apparently the SDC is expanding some production facilities to Vale, and part of that is a partnership with Winchester Arms. So I have to-" she grimaced "-_befriend_ Cardin."

"Yuck," Yang said.

Ruby nodded, and Weiss gave her a small smile that quickly faded.

"I hope I don't have to marry him," she remarked.

"WHAT?!" Ruby and Yang both yelled together.

Weiss jumped at their raised voices, then let out a nervous little laugh as she look at their shocked faces. "S-sorry. I just… I've been told I'll need to marry someone that will benefit and grow the company. I don't _think_ Father would want me to marry Cardin because Winchester is big enough that they wouldn't agree to just fold into the SDC, but…" She did her little head tilt shrug.

"Um… Weiss?" Yang spoke up.

"Yes?"

"That's effed up."

"I don't think I'll have to marry him!" Weiss tried to reassure them, though Ruby was just staring at her, wide-eyed and terrified. Marrying Cardin sounded _gross_. Marrying _anybody _sounded gross. "I just meant it's… you know, slightly possible. But just a little bit!"

"Weiss, marrying _anybody_ for your family's company instead of love seems effed up," Yang clarified.

"Oh."

"And gross," Ruby helpfully added.

Weiss raised a perplexed eyebrow at her.

"Marrying," Ruby explained. "Marrying is gross."

"Oh." Weiss gave her a long look. "But you'll have to marry someone eventually."

"No I won't!"

"Why would she _have_ to get married?" Yang asked, defensively putting a hand on Ruby's shoulder.

"Because… because you're supposed to!" Weiss sputtered. "You're supposed to go to university-or huntsmen academy, I suppose-graduate, get a job-which I already have waiting-and get married to some guy and have kids."

"Why's it have to be a guy?" Yang challenged.

Weiss blinked at her. "Um."

"Just saying," Yang shrugged, "girls marrying girls is okay too. And guys marrying guys."

"Right. Um. Yeah," Weiss struggled. "I'm… yes. But it's not okay for me."

"Why not?" Ruby asked.

"Because… because I _have_ to marry a man. And have kids. And-"

"You could adopt," Yang cut in. "Women that marry women can adopt."

"S-sure. But they wouldn't be a Schnee."

"Why wou-"

"Why are we even talking about this?!" Weiss shouted, launching to her feet. "This isn't important right now!"

Ruby hurried to stand too. "Sorry! Sorry. Did-what did he say about the reporter? I didn't catch everything."

Weiss gave her a condescending frown that Ruby had no idea how to interpret. She blinked innocently, and Weiss rolled her eyes and looked away.

"I have to get the reporter to retract the bit about me being on a date with a girl."

"I don't like your dad," Yang stated flatly.

Weiss scoffed. "Regardless of whether or not you like him, but he's become the richest and most successful man in the world."

"He's a dick."

Weiss shuffled her feet and stared at her toes.

Ruby looked back at the door. Weiss was really sad right now, obviously, but she seemed okay, all in all. But Blake was upset enough to storm off and tell Yang to leave her alone…

"Did Blake say where she was going?" she asked her sister.

Yang sighed and turned back to the door too. "To find a new book that could convince her not to throttle Weiss."

"What?!" Weiss squeaked.

"So library, I guess," Yang finished.

"But what did I do?!" Weiss whined. "I _said_ faunus were people too," she pined to Ruby.

It's true! She had said that! And that's awesome!

"Yeah, then you told your dad to turn it into a company talking point for publicity," Yang told her coldly.

Weiss hugged her elbow and started pinching herself. "Well-well yes. That's… that's how he thinks. That's what I had to say to make him happy."

"Mm… That makes sense, I guess," Yang admitted. "He does seem douchey like that."

"Yang!" Weiss cried.

"What?! Do you disagree?"

"You're talking about the richest and one of the most powerful men in the world! And my father!"

"So you don't think he's douchey?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I don't even know what that means," she huffed.

"You know exactly what it means."

Again, Weiss rolled her eyes, but she stayed silent.

Ruby gently reached out to grab the hand she was using to pinch her upper arm. Weiss blinked at the contact and flinched, but then looked down at her arm and saw the noticeably pink spot on it surrounding a crescent shaped indent in the skin.

"Oh. Thank you," she murmured.

Ruby smiled, then leaned in and gave Weiss a quick hug, then turned to Yang. "Can you keep Weiss company? I'm gonna go after Blake."

"She wanted to be alone, Rubes."

"Yeah, but that's dumb."

"Ruby-"

"I just want to make sure she's okay! And explain why Weiss said what she did."

"Shouldn't Weiss do that?"

Ruby looked back at Weiss, whose wide eyes conveyed the total terror she felt at the prospect of talking to Blake.

Yeah. Ruby had figured that would be the case.

"They'd just end up fighting." She moved to the door before Yang could protest some more. "Just keep Weiss company! Please!"

Weiss and Yang looked at each other apprehensively.

"Fine. Just don't annoy her, okay?" Yang grumbled.

Ruby frowned. "I would never!"

Yang and Weiss both let out little laughs, and that confused Ruby almost as much as how douchey Weiss' dad was.

"W-what?" she asked.

Yang shook her head quickly. "Nothing. Go on. Message me up and let me know how it goes, 'kay?"

"Okay!" Ruby opened the door, then shot a glance back at Weiss. "Weiss!"

"Hm?"

"No pinching yourself!"

Weiss rolled her eyes, but then stared nervously down at her feet again.

Ruby pointed at Yang. "Take care of her!"

"I don't need to be taken care of!" Weiss shouted at Ruby's back as she sped away.

Yeah. Right.

So Blake was probably at the library. No surprise there. The library and the tree down in the side courtyard that she and Yang like to hang out at seemed to be her "spots", kinda like Weiss and the piano or roof.

Ruby ran to the library in her Rose Form, leaving a slash of petals in her wake and startling a couple students that were out walking.

It was a big building, with a weird kind of pyramid shape at the bottom and a spire kinda thingy at the top. It looked like it was supposed to be a temple, not a library.

Inside it was warm, and the open, tiled lobby was really pretty. There were a couple tables on each side of the entrance that had arrangements of promoted books. A bit of a ways away was the front desk, where a student with her back turned to Ruby, talking to someone on the far side of the desk.

Wait! It was Velvet! She had the cute bunny ears and the perfect hair!

Ruby rushed forward and got a view of the other person.

It was Blake!

Dang, that was easy!

"Blake!" Ruby shouted, Rosing over to her.

"Sssssssh!" Blake and Velvet both hissed together as Ruby materialized by the desk.

Ruby winced. "Sorry," she whispered.

"Ruby, I told Yang I wanted to be left alone."

Ruby glanced at Velvet, who Blake was very clearly talking to, but didn't comment about it.

"I know!" she chirped instead. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Well I'm fine," Blake spat. "Don't you have a racist heiress to entertain?"

Ooooookay. Ruby glanced at Velvet, who seemed solemn rather than surprised at the description of Weiss.

So Blake was talking about this with her. Ruby figured that made sense a bit. Velvet was a faunus. She probably had some sort of super wise insight to give Blake about all this.

Plus, she's really nice. And her accent is awesome! So she's always great to talk to.

Ruby cleared her throat and turned back to her teammate. "She's… Blake, she's not evil."

"Really?" Blake shot back. "'Cause the kind of crap she spouts is the _reason_ the White Fang she hates so much even exists. But she doesn't just hate them! Somehow _all_ faunus are evil degenerates because of the actions of a few. If we judged humanity on the actions of jackasses like the Schnees it would go the same way!"

… 'Kay, she was really mad.

"Y-you're right, Blake."

Blake's eyebrows shot up, then narrowed suspiciously at Ruby. "I am? I mean, I _am_, but why do _you _think I am?"

Ruby fought back a little laugh. "You're right. The Schnees are jerks. Especially Weiss' dad. If you heard their whole conversation… he's not nice, Blake. And that was to his own _daughter_. He's probably an evil supervillain to everyone else."

Blake crossed her arms, unimpressed.

"To use Yang's words, he's a douche."

Blake's lips twitched, but then she rolled her eyes. "Right. So I'm right and they're awful."

"Yes, but Weiss is only like that because she was _raised _by that douche. But she's not him!"

Blake scoffed. "She wants to use her saving a faunus-something that she wouldn't have even done if _you_ hadn't gone into that store-as a publicity stunt for her company!"

"Because that's the kind of thing her dad listens to!"

"And it's the way she thinks!"

"Blake, me and Yang asked her about it after her dad hung up on her. She said that to try to find a way to make him happy."

Blake gave her a 'you're an idiot' look that Weiss would have approved of. "Yes, Ruby, and as long as she's trying to make her father happy, she's going to be a racist bigot."

"Well… yeah, but…"

"But?"

"But she can change! She thinks faunus are awful because that's how she was raised, and I think she's been overexposed to White Fang. And-and she knows her dad's not a good person. I think she's just trying to keep him happy so she can stay at Beacon."

"Well maybe she shouldn't."

"Blake!"

Blake lifted her chin challengingly. "What? If she's a hoity toity princess up in Atlas then why is she even here?"

"Because she wants to get _away_ from her family. Or at least her dad. She likes her sister. I'm not sure about her mom, and I don't think she likes her brother very much. But yeah! She knows her dad is mean. So we just gotta show her that he's also wrong about faunus!"

Blake scoffed. "That's not my job. I'm here to be a huntress, not to pointlessly try to fix a broken person that I don't even know."

Ruby put on the grumpiest face she could. "Blake! She's our teammate! And she's really nice if you get to know her. And I know she likes you, she thinks you're really cool when you two aren't freaking hating each other!"

"Ruby-"

"She just needs to meet nice faunus! I don't think she ever has! We just need to show her that faunooses are-"

Velvet let out a little giggle, and Ruby shot her a big smile before continuing.

"-are just normal people too!"

"Great, so she can be just a _normal_ condescending brat instead of a racist one."

"Hey! Weiss is awesome! And really nice!"

Blake rolled her eyes. "You ever heard the phrase rose-tinted glasses, Ruby?"

"Uh…" Had she? It sounded familiar. She wasn't sure what it meant. "No? But roses sound good, sooo…"

Blake rolled her eyes again and smirked. "Whatever. I don't want to, is that enough?"

"No!" Ruby yelled.

"Sssssh!" Velvet hissed at her again, reaching over and swatting the back of Ruby's hand.

"Sorry!" Ruby turned back to Blake and dropped her voice to a hush. "She's our teammate, and we're here to make each other better huntresses and better people. So no, it's not okay for you to not want to help! You can't hate her this much for something that can be fixed without doing what you can to try to make it better! Why do you even hate her so much for this? Why is this so personal?"

Blake and Velvet shared a long look that Ruby didn't understand. "Why do I have to have a reason to not like a racist?" Blake finally asked.

Dang nabbit. "That's not an answer!"

"I just-the faunus mean a lot to me, Ruby, okay? More than they do to you. And I've watched people like Weiss ruin lives, _regardless_ of whether or not the way they think is their fault. Okay?"

"Okay… Um." What was Ruby supposed to say? "Um… Just give her a chance?"

Blake looked at her flatly.

"Give her a chance!" Ruby repeated more forcefully. "That's an order from your team leader!"

"I'm pretty sure that's not how you're supposed to use your team leader powers, Ruby."

"Pft-I-well… _I'm _pretty sure your face isn't supposed to be fat and stupid, but it is!"

Blake turned to Velvet. "Is my face fat and stupid?"

Velvet shook her head, looking alarmed at Ruby's outburst. She didn't think Ruby _really _thought Blake's face was fat and stupid, right? It was obviously a joke.

"Does Coco pull her team leader card like this?" Blake asked the bunny girl.

"Sometimes," Velvet nodded. "Most of the time we just listen to her 'cause she's… you know… _Coco_. But when Fox and Yatsu don't listen or try to argue she goes all 'Raaaah! I'm team leaderrrr!' on them." She did a little angry Ursa impression with the last part. "It's pretty funny."

"What about when _you_ don't listen to her?" Blake asked.

"Oh, I always listen to her. I'm her Bunbun." Velvet gave a blushing but pleased smile.

Blake rolled her eyes. "So wrong," she muttered.

"_Why_?" Velvet asked in a way that made Ruby think this wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. "I'm a rabbit faunus. She has a cute little pet name for me. She doesn't mean it in a mean way or anything!"

"You're just exacerbating the problem when you let humans give you _pet_ names. We need to convince them we're _not_ animals."

Velvet's eyebrows furrowed grumpily in anger, something Ruby hadn't expected from her. "_Coco_ isn't part of the problem. And I don't need to convince anybody of anything. I'm just here to be me."

"Wait…" Ruby cut in as pieces clicked into place. "Is Coco, like, your… partner?"

Velvet gave her an amused smile. "Yes. Not team partner. But relationship partner, yes."

Ruby let out a squeal. "That's so cuuuuuuuuuuuuute!"

"Sssssh!"

"Sssssh!" Ruby hissed back instinctively.

Velvet rolled her eyes. "But thank you. You're right. Coco _is_ very cute."

"You are too!"

Velvet blushed again. "Thanks."

An idea popped into Ruby's head. "Hey, Velvet?"

"Hm?"

"Do you think you could talk to Weiss?"

Velvet's eyes went wide, and she looked at Blake like she's just watched Ruby grow a second head. "A-about what?"

"Um. Nothing! Just talk to her. Just so she can see that there are super awesome nice faunooses like you out there."

"I don't know…"

"You guys are both interested in hard-light Dust, right? You could talk about that! And if it works, maybe Weiss would be nice enough to get you some 'cause she's, like, the Dust Princess, ya know?"

Velvet frowned. "Yeah… Talking about Dust with someone like her might be fun."

"Yeah!"

"But…"

"But?"

What was there to 'but' about? This plan was perfect! Velvet was super sweet and smart and great to talk to. If talking to anyone would make Weiss see that faunus weren't all bad, it was her!

"I'm not… I'm not a spokeswoman for all faunus, Ruby. And I don't want to be."

"You don't have to! Just… if she sees that you're awesome, and I find her other awesome faunus to meet, then maybe she'll realize she's being silly and change her mind!"

Blake snorted. "'Silly'. Right."

Velvet turned to her. "Shouldn't _you_ be doing this? Isn't being an advocate for faunus equality kind of in your blood?"

"What?" Ruby said aloud. "What's that mean?"

"_Nothing_," Blake growled, glaring at Velvet, who glared defiantly back.

"Why would faunus equality advocate...ing be in her blood?" Ruby asked Velvet, since Blake wasn't sharing.

Velvet seemed to fold under Blake's glare, and she looked away. "N-she's not. Nevermind. I don't know about this, Ruby."

"Don't think about it like you have to, like… do anything faunusy or something. Just think of it like getting to know a new friend! Weiss is awesome and smart and if your weapon is even half as complicated as what you were saying yesterday, she'd be really great to talk to!"

Velvet sighed. "I… I guess. I'm gonna talk to Coco about this first."

"Okay!"

That sounded fair. And it was really cute!

With another sigh, Velvet turned to Blake. "Is she always like this?"

"Yes."

"Like what?!" Ruby squeaked. What was she being like?

"Overly earnest and cheery and lacking any compunctions," Blake answered with a smile.

"Oh." Those sounded like good things! What was a compunction, though? Wasn't that a word you use to connect two sentences together? And, but, or?

Did Blake just call her a butt?

Another student approached the desk, a stack of books in their arms. An older student that Ruby didn't recognize.

"Hey, Chase," Velvet greeted him, wheeling over to a computer behind the desk that Chase approached.

"Hey, V. You make any progress on Goodwitch's assignment?" He plopped the pile of books down and Velvet began scanning them. Books on Dust, it looked like. 'The Equations of Magic', 'Dust Mechanics Vol. 3', 'Dust: Refinement and Purification', and others like that.

"Not yet," Velvet answered ruefully. "Although you won't find any answers in these. Hard-light Dust hasn't been around long enough to be in textbooks."

"I knooow," Chase sighed. "Just hoping something in one of these will jog some brilliant revelation out of me."

"I'm pretty sure there's no right answer," Velvet told him.

"What?"

Velvet shrugged. "There's no way she can expect us to give anything other than theories. It's not like we can just pop over to the shop and get a hard-light vial to test it on skin contact. Pretty sure she just wants us to try to think through it and present our train of thought."

"Huh. Well… that's _way_ less stressful."

Velvet laughed. "I could totally be wrong, though."

Chase grinned. "Hey, you're in librarian mode right now. It's physically impossible for you to be wrong. You have brain powers."

"Ah, is that what that tingly feeling is?" Velvet joked, handing him his books back.

He laughed and gathered up his stack of learning. "Tell Coco she still owes us that coffee run," he said as he walked away.

"Oh, she remembers. She just wants you to beg for it."

Chase laughed again and rolled his eyes. "Have a good one!"

"You too!"

Velvet turned back to Blake and Ruby.

"So… are you the librarian?" Ruby asked. That seemed weird.

Chuckling, Velvet shook her head. "No, I'm just on the work-study program. So three days a week I spend four hours here scanning books."

"What's Coco think of that?" Blake asked with a smug grin that made Velvet blush but confused Ruby. "She into that 'stern librarian' roleplay?"

Velvet went straight red and decided that her fingernails were suddenly very interesting.

"... Maybe," she finally whispered with a giggle.

"I don't get it," Ruby blurted out.

"Good!" Velvet immediately piped up. "Good. Now go away, both of you. I have returns I need to sort."

"You'll think about talking with Weiss? Or… whatever?" Ruby asked her.

Velvet nodded, her smile falling a little bit. "Yeah. I'll talk about it with Coco. She'll know what to do."

That was really sweet how much trust she had in her partner. It was like Ruby and Yang! But different!

"You coming back to the room with me?" Ruby asked Blake.

Blake thought for a moment. "In a little while. I actually do want to look around for some books."

"Okay. Should I tell Yang you're okay? She was worried."

Blake smiled and rolled her eyes at the same time. "I'm _fine_, Ruby."

Wow, that sounded familiar.

"Alright. I'll see you later?"

It took a moment for Blake to realize that was a question. "Uh, yeah, of course."

Okay. So Blake wasn't so mad she wouldn't come back to a room with Weiss in it. Or at least she wasn't anymore.

"'Kay bye!" Ruby chirped, speeding away and leaving a grumbling Velvet swiping and griping at rose petals.

Time to go make sure Weiss and Yang hadn't exploded or frozen each other.

* * *

**Sorry for the late update, guys. Work has been awful and life has been distracting. I tried some drawing, Teamfight Tactics came out (and I'm addicted), and Spider-Man was epic. But I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Decided to add some more Velvet to this story 'cause she's bae af. **


	25. Thaw 2-9

The door slammed shut behind Ruby and a long, awkward pause settled in the room as Weiss and Yang both stood completely still and silent. It wouldn't have overly surprised Weiss if a tumbleweed bounced across the room.

She cleared her throat and clasped her hands behind her back to hide their shaking. "So…"

Yang blinked at her. "So."

"I guess I'll get started on homework," Weiss decided.

"No you won't!" Yang shouted, pointing a goofy finger at Weiss. "I've been given the solemn duty by our fearless leader to make sure you're okay!"

Weiss sighed. Of all the times for Yang to actually take her little sister seriously, it had to be this one.

"Well, I'm fine. I just want to do homework."

Yang scoffed. "That in and of itself is proof you're not okay."

Huffing and rolling her eyes, Weiss stomped over to her desk. Or at least she tried to. Yang moved to block her path.

"Is it really so ridiculous that some of us _like_ being productive and responsible?" she demanded, her voice sounding a bit petulant even in her own ears.

"Yes," Yang answered dryly.

"You're an idiot!"

Yang smiled a bit and shrugged. "Sure," she said simply.

What did that even mean? She was just _okay_ with being an idiot?

Or maybe she was just okay with Weiss thinking she was an idiot…

Yang glanced down and then frowned, taking a half step back and raising her hands up a bit in surrender. "Hey, are you really that mad at me?"

"What?"

Yang gestured down, and Weiss realized what was wrong. Her hands were now balled into fists at her sides, shaking.

"Oh, no! I'm… I'm sorry." She went back to her normal default of hugging her elbow, only to immediately drop the hand again. Ruby told her not to pinch herself, which is what she always ended up doing when she was feeling like an inadequate failure like this, so she needed to make sure she didn't go back to that. But now she didn't know what to do with her hands.

A small part of her wondered why she was listening to a dolt's orders for her, but it wasn't just because Ruby had told her to stop pinching herself. She recognized it was a bad habit. She hadn't even noticed that she did it until Ruby pointed it out last week, but now that she knew, it definitely didn't seem like a healthy thing to do.

"Hey…" Yang said, her voice that gentle tone that had surprised Weiss before. Weiss looked up at her, and she slowly placed a hand on Weiss' shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Weiss said instinctually. The physical contact was making her emotional alarms start ringing all at once, and Weiss had to consciously remind herself that Yang wasn't her mother or father.

Yang raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not mad at you," Weiss reassured her. "It's just…" She waved a hand to try to convey nothing and a million things at once. "My father…"

Yang gave her a sad smile. "Yeah." She seemed to flounder for a moment, unsure of what to say. Eventually she hedged into a different, though still unfortunate, topic. "What was all that Ruby was ranting about you pinching yourself?"

Weiss grimaced. She really wished Ruby hadn't just blurted that out. It was embarrassing. "Just a… nervous habit," she simplified.

That wasn't entirely accurate. She'd been pinching herself when she was feeling self-loathing or disappointment. But that wasn't a necessary distinction to give Yang.

Yang nodded in understanding, though. "Yeah. Sometimes I chew on my hair when I get nervous."

Weiss wrinkled her nose. "Gross."

Yang laughed and let go of Weiss' shoulder. A sigh of relief escaped Weiss quietly, and she felt her heartbeat slow down, though she hadn't consciously noticed it speed up.

Yang took a few steps back and leaned against the back of Weiss' chair where it sat in front of her desk. The fact that someone was touching her stuff made her brain itch, but it didn't seem appropriate to complain.

"Hey," Yang said again.

"What?" Weiss snapped a little too tersely.

'_Damn it, Weiss. She's just trying to help.'_

She hugged herself again as she chastised herself, not realizing what she was doing until the moment her nails dug into the skin of her arm again.

She dropped her hands.

Yang seemed to notice the flustered motions, giving Weiss another small smile. "Look," she said softly, "I know that you probably grew up very differently than Ruby and I did."

Weiss nodded slowly. She was worried about where this was going.

"I'm guessing you went to some fancy rich people private school?" Yang guessed.

This time Weiss shook her head. She was homeschooled, but she was having trouble finding her voice to say that aloud.

Yang's eyes widened in surprise. "Public school?"

Weiss shook her head again. "Ho-" she broke off into a cough and cleared her throat, her voice having come out raspy and weak. "Homeschooled," she tried again.

Yang let out a low whistle and crossed her arms. "... Shit."

A soft snort escaped Weiss. Yeah, that was a good way to put it.

Yang gave her another soft smile at the shared humor that slowly faded. "So… what was a normal day for Weiss like, before you came to Beacon?"

Wow. That was… a big question.

"Do we _have_ to talk about this?" she whined, looking around to try to find some sort of distraction.

"Yes," Yang answered forcefully. "We're teammates, Weiss. And I'd like to think we can be friends, especially since Ruby freaking loves you, so I'm going to _have_ to find some way to get along with you. And I'm hoping you and Blake can be friends to."

Weiss raised her eyebrows at that, but Yang pressed on.

"I think it's possible. As… difficult as you can sometimes be, and unfortunate views of faunus aside, you do seem like a nice person." Weiss opened her mouth to protest, but Yang didn't let her get a word in, finishing, "Ruby wouldn't like you so much if you weren't."

That made Weiss stop short. Was it bad that the best advocate for positive traits in Weiss wasn't Weiss' own behaviour, but rather the fact that Ruby liked her?

Probably, though a couple months ago Weiss wouldn't have even cared what opinion of her someone like Yang even had. But she should care now, right? Like Yang said, they were teammates.

"So I'd like to know what your life was like," Yang continued. "You're so… different, and I'd like to understand why."

Different? Different as in better, sure.

'_Stop it, Weiss.'_

Weiss sighed, pushing her ego aside. "Okay," she conceded.

"Wanna sit?" Yang asked, gesturing to the chair next to her. Ruby's chair.

Weiss nodded, but moved to sit on the edge of her bed instead. Yang took it in stride and pulled out Weiss' chair to sit in front of her. The back of Weiss' brain was itching even more at the sight of Yang in _her_ chair, but she kept ignoring it.

"So," Yang sighed, clapping her hands down on her knees. "So let's just say it's Monday morning at the Schnee, uh, palace a few months ago. What's Weiss doin'?"

Weiss swallowed. She really didn't want to have this conversation, but… but it would help, right? She needed to figure out what the Crucible she was doing with her hands, though. She eventually settled on clasping them together in her lap so tightly it hurt.

"Well… I'd wake up at seven and go for a run, like I still do."

Yang nodded, familiar. "Why do you do that, by the way?"

"Why do I run?" Weiss asked, unsure what the point of the question was. Didn't it make sense for a huntress to be fit?

"Yeah. Like, when did you start waking up at seven in the morning to go running and why?"

"Oh. Well… I started running a couple years ago. I decided I wanted to be a huntress like my sister and she told me I should get fit, so… so I did."

Yang nodded again. "Makes sense. Oka-"

"And I feel like, you know, I'm never going to be very strong, like you are, and my aura doesn't amplify my strength very well, but at least I'll have a lot of stamina to make up for that. Maybe. I'm not sure if it will, but-"

"Weiss."

Weiss looked up to Yang, who was giving her that same soft smile.

"It's okay," Yang said. "I get it. And I'm sure it will help."

"Thanks," Weiss murmured, looking back down at her hands.

"How fast is your mile?"

"Hm?" The question caught Weiss off guard.

"How fast do you run a mile?" Yang asked again.

"F-four fourty-nine."

Yang let out a low whistle of appreciation and leaned back. "Damn. Nice."

The competitive edge that Weiss was constantly honing forced her to ask, "What's yours?" She knew her mile time, but she wasn't really sure what she should be comparing to. The fastest Vytal Games time recorded was 4:04, but was Weiss, as a huntress, supposed to measure herself off of competitive runners, or other huntsmen and huntresses?

She should ask Winter what her mile time is.

"Five thirty-four," Yang answered easily. "So you're, like, almost a minute faster than me. That's pretty damn impressive."

The complete lack of shame Yang had in admitting to being slower threw Weiss off. How was she so okay with being… worse?

"T-thanks," Weiss said instead. "Though I'm sure Ruby would beat me anyway."

Yang chuckled. "You'd be surprised. Sure, Ruby might beat all of our asses in a hundred yard dash-even without her semblance-but I'm not sure she could beat you in a mile."

"Really?"

Yang nodded. "She's pretty bad at long distances. Can't keep a steady pace. Starts too fast and tires herself out."

"That sounds like her," Weiss said with a smile.

Yang laughed again. "Yeah, plus she doesn't have the patience to just _run_ for that long. She'll get bored."

"That _definitely_ sounds like her."

Yang smiled again. "So you go out at an inhuman hour to run and be a fit lil' huntress. I'm guessing it's cold as all heck that early in Atlas, yeah?"

Weiss nodded. "It is. I'm okay in the cold, though."

"Is it 'cause you're an Ice Queen?" Yang teased with a grin.

"I _will_ freeze you in a block of ice," Weiss threatened.

"Spoken like a true Ice Queen," Yang teased some more.

Weiss rolled her eyes, but she couldn't get too mad when it was very clear from Yang's smile that she was just joking.

"So you run in the cold morning when you should be sleeping 'cause you're a crazy person. What then?"

Weiss huffed out a light laugh. "Well… then I'd come in, shower, get dressed, and Klein would have breakfast ready for me."

"Klein is one of your manservant dudes?"

Weiss' eyes narrowed. "Butler, and he's the only one."

"What's he like?" Yang asked, cocking her head to the side curiously.

Weiss smiled. "Klein is great. He's always been kind to me."

"And you've been kind to him?"

"Of course!" Weiss bristled, offended. What was that supposed to mean? She had nothing but respect and admiration for Klein. He was… a rock of kindness in a storm of awfulness back home. He was the only friendly face in the mansion once Winter left.

Yang raised her hands in surrender again. "Okay. Just askin'. What kind of breakfast would he make you?"

Weiss tilted her head in a little shrug. "All sorts of stuff. He's an amazing cook, so I just was always happy with whatever he made me. Crepes, omelets, quiches-"

"Daheck's a quiche?"

"It's like a… breakfast… pie?"

"Oh. Huh."

"They're really good."

"I'll take your word for it."

Weiss sighed. "But yeah. I'd eat whatever Klein cooked, which was usually just whatever he felt like making that day, but sometimes Whitley demanded something specific for breakfast, and Klein would make me the same thing too."

"Whitley's your brother, right?"

Weiss nodded. "Little brother, yes."

"What's he like?"

Why was Yang asking all these annoyingly personal questions. Weiss could feel goosebumps forming on her forearms from how uncomfortable this was.

Maybe that was just her imagination.

Though Weiss shouldn't feel this uncomfortable, right? She'd be totally okay talking about this stuff with Ruby because she knew Ruby would never judge her or look at her differently for how... _deranged _her childhood was. But Yang was Ruby's sister. They would have been raised the same, right?

They weren't the same person, though. Yang was more combative, confrontational. More likely to decide she didn't like Weiss if Weiss said something she didn't like or approve of. But… but she was here, trying to get to know Weiss. That should count for something. It did for Ruby.

"He's… unpleasant. He and I don't have the same kind of relationship that you and Ruby do, that's for sure."

"Well duh, that's 'cause I'm the best and Ruby's even better," Yang said with a smile. Her expression faded back to somber. "What's unpleasant about him?"

Weiss shook her head and let out a long breath. "He's just… arrogant and petulant and demanding and self-obsessed."

"Hm."

"What?"

Yang shook her head. "Nothing."

It clearly wasn't nothing.

"_What?"_ Weiss demanded.

Yang deliberated for a second, then shook her head again and repeated, "Nothing. So your breakfast-maestro-that-has-to-be-lame-'cause-he-can't-make-Yangcakes cooks for you, then what?"

Ignoring the teasing barb at Klein, Weiss continued. "Well, then the tutoring starts, unless there's something special my father has us do."

"What kind of something special?"

"Oh, just like if he's having a meeting with board members and wants me to sit in, or if he has a lunch with another councilman or something. Or if it's tax season and he wants me to learn from the accountants how to minimize taxes… or when hard-light Dust was first being developed, he had me meet with the research scientists about a billion times to learn what it does and how to use it, then we talked to the director of marketing another billion times to figure out how to sell it and to whom… Stuff like that."

Yang blinked a couple times. "That sounds… W-was it boring? It sounds boring, but you're weird, sooo…"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "No, it wasn't boring."

Yang shook her head in disbelief, but Weiss realized she wasn't being entirely truthful.

"Well, okay. The auditing is boring. It's… yeah, it makes even my eyes glaze over. And I always hated meeting with politicians or investors or the company board. But I liked-"

"Why?" Yang interrupted.

"Why what?"

"Why do you hate talking to the rich people?"

"B-because… I hate people?"

The answer clearly didn't satisfy Yang. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"W-well I do!" Weiss protested. "Mostly."

It was true! As a general rule, people were idiots and annoying and Weiss hated them. Then there were annoying idiots like Ruby that Weiss for some reason didn't mind all that much anymore. And there was Yang, who was partially stomachable except for when she was being a nosy jerk like right now.

"Did you hate something in particular about these people?" Yang asked, still not letting it go.

"No," Weiss sighed. "Well, some of them were arrogant, condescending assholes, and the ones that weren't just kissed my father's ass all day hoping for his investment or social backing. Except General Ironwood. He was always kind, and the only person I've ever seen my father defer to, though he was never happy about it."

"It doesn't sound like he's _ever_ happy."

Another dry huff of a laugh escaped Weiss. "No, that he isn't… And…" She trailed off, not sure she really wanted to continue this thought.

"And?" Yang prompted.

The words spilled out of Weiss, coming out in a desperate tumble. "And those meetings were awful because no matter what I did my father was never happy. When we'd go home he'd be furious at me for embarrassing him, no matter how hard I tried. Like I accidently called an unmarried woman missus because I didn't realize she was unmarried and she got offended because she was a snobby socialite that _cared_ about that for some reason, and Father was… _really _mad. And once, when I was young, I used the wrong fork for my salad and one of the idiot men we were eating with commented, and apparently it was a big enough deal that I got the belt that night. And when some-"

"The belt?" Yang asked, alarmed. "He beat you?"

"I… um…"

'_Shit.'_

Leaning forward in her chair, Yang looked at Weiss with an infuriating amount of pity and concern, to the point Weiss wanted to slap her. Nobody should pity _Weiss Schnee_, heiress to the freaking world. There was nothing to pity her for.

"Weiss?"

"Only when I messed up," Weiss answered honestly. Her father only hit her when she made mistakes. Because she wasn't _supposed_ to make mistakes. She was a Schnee. Winter and Whitley never made mistakes. But for some reason there was always something for Father to get mad at her for.

Not that it was all that bad the past couple years anyway. After getting control and practice over her aura, she'd used it to make the disciplining substantially less painful. She'd just had to make sure it was weak enough that Father didn't notice, because he became a thousand times madder when he did.

"How often did you… 'mess up'?" Yang asked, the tone of the last two words making it clear she didn't see it that way.

"Only once or twice a week," Weiss told her hands.

"Weiss..."

"_What_?"

"That's not…" Yang trailed off, leaning back with a sigh.

"Not what?" Weiss challenged. "Not normal? Plenty of parents discipline their kids. Save your pity for someone that deserves it."

"Wei-"

"I'm part of the richest family in the _world_, Yang, and I'm set to _become_ the richest person when I inherit the company. Something tiny like my father beating me is nothing compared to how good I have it. So just leave it alone."

… Wow. The amount of bite in her words surprised her, and from Yang's shocked expression and the way she pulled back, it had surprised her too.

Weiss just really hated that pitying look. It was the same look her mother gave her whenever Weiss talked about how she was trying to please Father.

"... Sorry," Yang said eventually. "I didn't mean to… I just… Maybe you're right. Maybe it's normal. But it's not _okay_, Weiss."

"I-"

"Regardless of how nice your money is. Fathers shouldn't… they shouldn't treat their daughters that way."

Weiss looked down at her hands again, then unclasped them when she realized her nails were digging into the backs of her palms. She _really _needed to stop this.

"I'm sure our experience with parenting is very different," she said quietly, _willing_ her anger away.

A snort came out of Yang. "Yeah, that's an understatement. Speaking of which, where's your mom in all this?"

Oof.

"I don't see her all that often anymore. She kind of claimed one wing of the mansion and stays there drinking all day. Except for when she goes out to party. Only Klein really sees her every day I think. I used to, but it got… tiring. I don't really like talking to her. And she always smells bad from the alcohol."

Yang stared at her in silence for a few seconds. "... Wow," she finally breathed.

Weiss sighed. "What?"

"I just… can't even imagine living in your home. Like… what the _fuck_?"

Weiss swallowed thickly. "Well… I still have a pretty good life."

"I'm not sure the money is worth that family, Weiss," Yang said gently.

"My sister's great, though! And usually got to see her at least a couple times a month."

"Wait, why just… is she drinking in another room all day?"

"What?!" Weiss almost screeched, offended that anyone would talk about Winter that way. "No! She was just in Atlas. Academy! Atlas Academy. And then she joined the military."

"Well sure, but don't you live in Atlas? Like, the same city? Why couldn't she visit more?"

"Oh. Well she couldn't visit pretty much ever. When she decided to become a huntress my father was furious and excommunicated her from the family. She's not allowed to come home."

"Oh. Crap."

Weiss shrugged. "Yeah. And I was only allowed to leave to visit her when I was done with my lessons and didn't have any special tasks from my father. And Winter was busy a lot. I got to see her a bit more once she was getting started in the military because she got stationed in Atlas and got her own apartment and stuff… Like, she taught me how to drive this summer! That was… neat."

"Oh, nice," Yang said with a smile. Then she frowned. "But… question."

"Mm."

"If he was furious at your sister for leaving to become a huntress, why is your dad okay with you doing it?"

"Oh." Weiss took a deep breath. "Well I promised that after graduating I'd come back to the company. That's mandatory. And when Winter left she kind of insulted Father a bunch and said she didn't _want_ to lead the company. But she could do that because General Ironwood gave her a full scholarship, so she didn't need Father to pay for her schooling."

"Dang. So she's awesome like Ruby, huh?"

Weiss smiled proudly and nodded. "Very awesome." Her smile faded away. "Also, I think Father was extra mad because Winter was also really good at being… you know, an heiress."

"What do you mean?"

"She never did anything to make Father mad like I do. She was… _is_… perfect. And she left, leaving my father stuck with me to take up her mantle. And I'm… bad at it."

Now that Weiss thought about it, her Father started getting mad at her more after Winter left. Probably because he hadn't been paying much attention to her before then, so he hadn't noticed how often she messed up.

"Weiss, I don't… I don't understand."

"Understand what?"

Yang spread her hands wide in exasperation. "I don't see how your dad or _you _can think you're so awful at so much. Like, I'm not gonna go all Ruby on you and tell you that you're super duper uber awesome or whatever, but you are… _really_ good. At a lot of things. And I haven't even gotten to see you do much yet. Maybe you _are_ super duper uber awesome."

Weiss smiled sadly. "Really good isn't good enough for a Schnee."

"What about super duper uber awesome?" Yang asked with a small grin.

Rolling her eyes, Weiss sighed. "That would be better, probably. But I don't think I am. Maybe if I can beat Pyrrha…"

"Hey, what about me?" Yang chirped, straightening up and putting her hands on her hips. "I'm really effing strong, yo."

"I'm sure you are," Weiss replied lightly.

"I am! I'll show you. Professor Awesome said we're doing two v twos this Friday, right? I'll wreck your and Ruby's faces and then you'll be all 'Wow, Yang is so super duper uber awesome' and I'll be like 'yah'."

Weiss rolled her eyes again. "Whatever. Are you done interrogating me?"

Yang's face fell. "I'm not trying to interrogate you, Weiss, just tr-"

"I know, I know," Weiss interrupted with a sigh. "Sorry. I just don't like talking about this stuff."

"Yeah," Yang nodded. "We can stop. How much of this does Ruby know?"

"Um. No specifics. I'm not sure how well I even _could_ explain it to her. I don't think she really understands the concept of a father being… not nice to his daughter."

"Yeaaah," Yang sighed. "She thinks everyone in the world is as nice as her. Even though people have been mean to and around her all the time. It just, like, doesn't register. She makes excuses for them, like 'those meanies are actually nice, _but_', ya know?"

"I do. So it's hard. I don't mind talking to _her_ about it too much, but it's hard to make her understand."

"Yeah. But I guess that's the price you gotta pay for that bubbly bundle of sweetness."

That got a laugh out of Weiss. It was an accurate description of Ruby, though annoying and hyperactive and annoyingly hyperactive should probably be fit somewhere in there.

"Yes," Weiss agreed simply instead.

When Yang tilted her head and gave her a quizzical look, Weiss bristled again.

"What?"

"You're so weird, Weiss."

"What? Why?" What had she done? She'd just agreed that Ruby was sweet!

"Have you ever said 'yeah' or, like, 'yep' or 'yeppers' or anything like that instead of just '_yes_'?" Yang asked, making the last word sound deep an imperious-probably how she thought Weiss sounded, though it was _totally_ off.

"Well those aren't _words_, so… no."

"_And_ you said 'whom' like a total nerd."

"It was the correct word to say! I'm sorry _you're_ uneducated and lack any desire to use proper grammar!"

Yang chuckled and stood, giving Weiss' knee a light backhanded slap. "I'm just teasin' ya, Ice Queen."

"Well I'm not teasing you… Fire… Peasant…"

Okay, Weiss' insulting nicknames needed some work.

From her snorting laugh, Yang thought so too. "Points for effort, babe," she chuckled. Just then, her scroll beeped, and she pulled it open to read a message and smile. "Well, looks like Ruby's on her way back. And she said Blake's calmed down a bit."

"For now," Weiss grumbled.

"Yeah, well, you're not going to get any help from me on that front," Yang said, spreading her arms out wide and stretching casually. "You may be nice enough, but your views on faunus are totally asinine."

"Well I didn't _ask _for your help, and… your _face_ is asinine," Weiss retorted.

"I thought you thought 'your face' jokes were lame," Yang commented, dragging Weiss' chair back to the desk, bouncing it along the carpet as she went. Each bounce made Weiss wince.

"I don't," Weiss agreed. "But… fight fire with fire, right?"

Yang raised an eyebrow at her, then let out another laugh. "Ha! Clever."

Weiss huffed in response. Of _course_ she was clever.

"Rubes says she's on her way back. Do you wanna come with us to the game?"

"Noooo," Weiss answered quickly.

"You sure? It'll be a lot of fun. Lots of people, great game, concession stand food, cotton candy…"

"That sounds…" Weiss had to physically keep herself from shuddering. "No. No, thank you."

She actually really did appreciate that Yang was inviting her-she'd expect it from Ruby because… well, it's Ruby. But _Yang_ trying to convince her to come along? That was something else.

But crowds and loudness and over-processed, low-quality food and unholy amounts of sugar… That sounded like Weiss' own personal hell, sans her parents.

"Okay," Yang conceded. "I'm sure Ruby would be happy to have you there, though."

When Weiss narrowed her eyes to squint suspiciously at Yang, the blonde's straight face broke, and she let out an embarrassed grin.

Yeah, she knew it was a low blow attempt to persuade Weiss.

"I'm sure she would," Weiss said diplomatically. "But she also knows why I wouldn't want to go."

Attempts foiled, Yang frowned. "Aight. I'll bring you a souvenir of the fun you mis-"

The door to the room banged open and Ruby stood panting in the doorway, hands on either side of the frame.

"I'm back!" she panted. "Is Weiss still alive?"

"Hey!" they both cried in protest.

Weiss could totally take Yang.

Ruby rushed over to Weiss and gently cupped her face with her hands. The suddenness and intimacy made Weiss freeze.

But then, Ruby used her thumbs to pull on the edges of Weiss' lips and said, "Smile for me, Weiss."

"What? No!"

"Smile! I need to make sure you have all your teeth!"

"Get _off_ me you dolt!" Weiss demanded, pulling her face back and pushing Ruby's hands away.

Ruby let out a little giggle, then turned and skipped over to her sister to give her a hug.

"Blake's alright?" Yang asked.

"Mm-hm!" Ruby nodded. "I don't think she's so mad at Weiss now. I told her how big of a buttface Weiss' dad was. She already kinda knew, but… I told her it wasn't Weiss' fault and I _think_ she listened. At least a lil' bit."

"Well that's good," Yang smiled, ruffling her sister's hair affectionately. "At least a lil' bit."

"Yep!" Ruby agreed, this time not noticing or caring that her hair had gone from messy to disheveled from her sister's touch. "What'd you two do while I was off being an awesome team captain?"

"Oh, ya know. A couple friendly arm wrestles. Weiss won."

"Whaaaaat?" Ruby gasped, turning and staring at Weiss with wide-eyed disbelief.

"That didn't happen, Ruby," Weiss stated flatly, containing her smile that Ruby had actually somewhat believed it possible that Weiss had won. "We just talked."

"Oh," Ruby said with a pout. Her pout turned into a childish glare as she turned to her sister and kicked the girl in the ankle.

Yang gave her a rueful smile and enveloped poor Ruby in a big bear hug while the little brunette squirmed in her arms.

"No! You don't get hugs! You're a lying buttface!" Ruby squealed with her unsuccessful escape attempts. "Butt!... Face!... Grrrrr!"

"I'm not _getting_ hugs, Rubes," Yang grinned. "I'm givin' 'em!"

"Release me, fiend!"

"Why, so you can go bother Weiss and ask her what we talked about while you were gone?"

"Yeah!"

"Feel free to not release her," Weiss said with a small smile.

Yang's laughter filled the room as Ruby let out a whine.

"Weeeeiss! Why hast thou forsaken me?!"

"Why you talkin' like a goofball, Peanut?" Yang mumbled into the messy ball of brunette hair in her face.

"I'm using fancy Weiss-speech!" Ruby chirped, still wiggling to try to get free.

Weiss went to her desk and began pulling out the study materials for Dust Theory. "I do _not_ talk like that."

"Prove it!"

"Wh-how? What?"

"Rubes, I think you dialed your doofus meter up a little too high," Yang said, miming turning a dial on Ruby's head with one hand while easily maintaining her grip on the girl with the other.

"I dialed it just right, thank you very much!" Ruby said with a giggle. She gave another tug and this time Yang let her go, so she stumbled backwards and almost hit her head on the bedframe. She didn't seem to mind, though, and immediately skipped over to Weiss where she was sitting at her desk.

"Whatchya dooooin'?" Ruby sang, wrapping her arms around Weiss shoulders from behind.

"Homework. Like you should be," Weiss grumped at her partner.

Blanching, Ruby straightened up, scratching her head. "Oh… yeah. Totally. Should totally be doing thaaa-hey, Yang! Shouldn't we be going to the windball game with team JNPR soon?"

Weiss rolled her eyes and tried to focus on her homework as her teammates bantered behind her.

"I dunno, Rubes, maybe we _should_ stay in and do homework," Yang drawled.

Weiss raised an eyebrow at the statement, but from Yang's tone she was clearly being facetious.

Ruby didn't seem to catch that, though.

"What?! Wait-hey, no!"

"Kidding, doofus."

"Oh."

"No way am I spending a beautiful Sunday inside doing _homework_."

"Truuuuue. See, Weiss? Yang knows what's up."

"Yeah, Weiss," Yang added. "Get woke."

"Ignoring yooou," Weiss sing-songed.

Just then there was a knock on the door. Yang opened it to reveal Jaune and Ren. Jaune had what looked like a pancake rolled into a haphazard cylinder wrapped in a paper towel in his hands.

"You ladies ready?" Jaune asked.

"Sure!" Ruby chirped while Yang darted to the bathroom shouting, "I need to do my haaaaair!"

"Alllright," Jaune said. He looked at Weiss and leaned overly casually against the doorframe. "So, uh, Weiss. Will you be join-"

Weiss closed the door in his face with a glyph.

"Weisssss," Ruby chastised, walking over to open the door again. "Don't be mean."

In reply, Weiss stuck her tongue out at her partner.

Jaune was rubbing his nose and Ruby let out a little giggle. "Whatcha got there?" she asked, pointing at Jaune's rolled up pancake.

"A breakfast burrito!" he answered. From the way Ren lifted a hand to rub at his temples tiredly, Weiss got the impression this was a source of some contention between them. "Pancake wrapped around bacon and syrup and scrambled eggs and cheese!" Jaune added.

"Is that… what a breakfast burrito is?" Ruby asked, confused.

"No," Ren sighed.

"How is this not a breakfast burrito?!" Jaune exclaimed, raising his hands up in the air in exasperation, and in doing so a bit of scrambled egg tumbled out of his paper towel and onto the carpeted hallway floor.

"Oops. Hold on." Jaune knelt to pick it up and tipped his stupid pseudo-breakfast burrito, causing another piece of egg to fall to the ground. "Ack!"

Ren shook his head sadly. "I have to live with him," he lamented, straightfaced.

Another giggle came out of Ruby as Yang exited the bathroom. She presented herself to Weiss.

"How's my hair?" she asked.

Dutifully, Weiss inspected her teammate's golden mane.

"... The… same?" she answered honestly.

"Nice," Yang said with a nod.

'_Then what was the point?...'_ Weiss wondered to herself. She shrugged away the question. Yang was just weird.

"Ready to go?" Ren asked the two sisters.

"Yep!" they both answered together.

Ruby bounced over to Weiss and gave her another hug. "Bye, Weiss! Have fun!"

Weiss considered saying that she wasn't _trying_ to have fun, she was trying to be productive and responsible, but… that didn't seem like the right thing to say.

"Thank you. You too." She gave one of Ruby's hands a light pat before the girl pulled away and gave her a big smile.

"We will! I'm gonna eat all the cotton candy in the world! When I come back I'll have a blue tongue!"

"A worthy endeavor," Weiss joked, rolling her eyes.

"Later, Weiss," Yang added, clapping Weiss' shoulder annoyingly as she headed out.

As she closed the door, Ruby gave her one more smile and tiny wave that Weiss returned. The door clicked shut.

At last. Some peace and quiet.

Weiss did her best to purge the anxiety that had built up over the past couple hours, from the awkwardness of sitting next to Blake while playing a board game to the terror that had slammed through her veins as she spoke to her father to the discomfort of that annoying conversation with Yang. She just focused on her homework. It would have served better as a distraction if it had required a modicum of thought, but it the questions and equations were basic Dust principles that Weiss had learned when she was eight.

Still, though it didn't take brainpower, it did take time. She even dragged it out a bit, making sure to show all of her work, every bit of arithmetic. Even carrying the ones.

A good hour passed with this distraction, but once she was done…

The room was silent. There was no assignment to work on. There was nobody to talk to-or rather, nobody around to talk _at_ her. She was considering going downstairs to the piano or playing her violin when she remembered…

Ruby's paints.

She probably shouldn't, though. Weiss was terrible at art. Time spent making any was wasted.

But if there ever was a good time to try, it was now, while she was alone. Nobody was around to witness how incredibly untalented she was. And she might be able to improve a little bit, to the point where she could maybe make something impressive to show Ruby so she wouldn't think her sweet gift was going to waste.

Not that Ruby was a priority, but… making something nice with her paints just seemed like a considerate thing to do.

Her mind made up, Weiss gave her pen back to Sir Writes-A-Lot and slowly stood and shuffled over to her bed, under which she'd stored the paints and canvases and other supplies she'd gotten, like the paint tray and the table easel and the painter's tape.

She tiptoed out to the kitchen to get a cup of water and a paper towel. With team JNPR and the rest of her team gone, it wasn't very likely that she was going to run into anyone, but she still moved quietly because she couldn't shake the irrational feeling that she was doing something bad.

Plus, she _really_ didn't want to bump into Cardin right now.

She got what she needed and crept back to their room, gingerly sitting at her desk and setting everything up.

What to paint, though?

She could try painting her inner spirit again-or rather, Winter's because she still didn't know what hers looked like, since she still hadn't ever managed to summon it.

Their 'inner spirit' was what their grandfather had supposedly called his first summon, believing it to be a manifestation of their souls to a more literal degree than aura was. His had been a large clockwork soldier with the head of a bear, according to Mother, which sounded… strange.

Winter's was a huge knight, with a massive kite shield and a longsword and long, sweeping cape. Weiss assumed hers would look much the same because she and Winter were so similar… other than the fact that Winter was better at pretty much everything that wasn't music.

So Weiss' inner spirit would just be a smaller, weaker knight, right?

But she'd tried such a painting before and it hadn't gone very well. She could never get people to look right, always messing up their form somehow. She was better at landscapes. And preferred them.

She could do a painting of the Vale cityscape… The mental photo she'd committed to memory was still in full detail in her mind's eye…

There was also Beacon. The castle-like school looked beautiful, standing proud on its own island with the ocean all around it.

An image formed in her mind, one of a tasteful oil painting of the academy on the its tall island, waves crashing into it with Beacon Bridge in the foreground and leading to the painting's subject. The edges of the image could fade out with artsy brush strokes.

If she could do it right, it would be beautiful.

Of course, she couldn't, but if she got close enough then maybe Ruby might like it anyway.

With one of the medium sized canvases-or canveese, as Weiss remembered with a smile-set up on the easel in front of her, Weiss penciled in the rough shape of Beacon in the center. She remembered Winter's patient lessons from years ago and focused on making sure the size and position of the parts of the composition were sketched in, rather than an excessive amount of details.

She drew in Beacon, its spires and towers, then added in the rocky cliffs of the island it sat on. It looked bad-it was impossible to find the balance between curves and jagged lines to make the rocks and dirt look right-but… it was just a rough sketch to figure out placement. Even Winter's initial sketches didn't look all that great.

Well that was a lie, but regardless, it didn't need to look great yet.

What about the waves? Should she sketch in the waves-or the clouds, for that matter? Probably not? Too much lead on the canvas would discolor the paint.

The bridge should be on there, though. Weiss fished a ruler out of her bag for that. Ugh, getting the perspective right was frustrating. Luckily, the bridge was straight and centered, so it wasn't too bad, she just had to make sure the angles of the two sides were symmetrical. Which was still annoyingly hard.

Okay, the shapes were all there, more or less. Time for some painting.

The acrylics Ruby had gotten for her… weren't the best. They weren't drying as quickly as she was used to, weren't adhering to the canvas right, but...they were from Ruby. At least they mixed well!

She started with the ocean and sky because it would be easier to go over the lighter colors later. And-

Yep. It already looked terrible. The water didn't really look anything like water, just a big expanse of pthalo blue. How was she supposed to make it wavy-ish? White, right? Adding white at the right spots to make the ocean look both reflective and three dimensional.

…

It wasn't really working. It looked better now, sure, but still not like an ocean. With a sigh she moved on to the sky.

Was she supposed to paint the clouds in white or just leave the canvas bare where they were? Paint, right? Leaving it bare would leave the canvas lines in the image.

After coating the top of the scene with a light blue, she waited (longer than should be necessary) for the sky to dry before adding in some clouds.

Clouds were hard.

She remembered watching Winter paint them before, giving light little flicks of the brush with a loose wrist. Emulating that, Weiss added-

Oh no. She'd messed up already.

The brushstrokes were too far apart! They looked less like clouds and more like drops of bleach had just been splattered randomly across the canvas.

Crap.

She added some more flicks to try to connect the original flicks… and sighed. This was awful. Clouds definitely weren't supposed to look this geometrical.

Time to move on.

The island was hard too, particularly figuring out the colors. Just a flat brown for the rocks definitely would look wrong, but she wasn't sure what needed to be added to improve it. She added some green on top for grass, some darker browns and blacks to add dimension, but…

But it mostly just looked like a big brown blob.

Another sigh of frustration slipped out of her as she leaned back, cleaning off the brush she was using with the paper towel a bit more forcefully than necessary. This was such a waste of time.

She spent a long time inspecting her pathetic painting, the goofy blue and brown nothings that had looked so much better in her head.

Might as well finish. Add the buildings of Beacon and get this catastrophe over with.

Beacon's color scheme was easy enough-clean whites and dark greys. The shape of Beacon Tower was also pretty iconic, so it didn't take much to make it look like the suggestion of the building. A suggestion was all she could really manage to make with how small it was on the canvas, but perhaps that was for the best. If she tried to make it detailed it would just end up looking awful. More than it already did.

Next came the spire that was connected to the tower main by the weird bridge thing. Then the dome of the Battle Center, with it's-

*_click*_

Weiss let out a shriek as the door opened, stumbling back and pushing the canvas away from her, knocking the easel back a bit and tipping it on its side. The painting bounced and landed face up on Ruby's desk.

"What the-Weiss?"

A shadow stood in the doorway and faded away to reveal Blake peeking in from the hallway.

"S-sorry," Weiss gasped. "Just… frightened me is all. I wasn't expecting anyone back so soon."

Blake slowly made her way into the room as Weiss recomposed herself. "I was only gone for almost six hours," she said quietly.

"What?" Weiss pulled out her scroll and checked the time. How was it already past five?

"This looks nice," Blake said, still quiet, staring down at the painting.

Weiss scrambled to pick it up. "Ha! No. Sorry. Don't look at that. It's terrible." She tucked the painting into the space between the edge of her desk and the wall where it would be hidden from view and started cleaning up her supplies.

"No, it… it looked nice," Blake offered again.

Weiss gave her a weak smile in response. It most certainly didn't look nice. It was terrible. So Blake was either being kind or just didn't know good art when she saw it.

Blake pointed, then awkwardly dropped her finger and stammered, "Those the, uh… paints that Ruby got you?"

Weiss swallowed, freezing. Apparently they were having a conversation now. "Yes," she answered nervously.

Blake nodded to herself, then slowly shuffled over to her own desk. "Ruby's, uh, something else, huh?"

'_So that's how we're doing this?'_

That was fine with Weiss. She was happy not to talk about… _that_. And talking about Ruby was easy.

"She is," Weiss agreed.

"Kinda nosy, huh."

That made Weiss chuckle. "She's just trying to be a good team leader. And, you know, she wants everyone in the world to be best friends."

"Yeah. But… not everyone can be."

Weiss swallowed. Was Blake saying they couldn't be friends? Or was it just more of a general statement?

"I don't know," she hedged. "Ruby might be able to make it happen."

Blake smiled softly at that. "If anyone can, it's probably her."

"And she's our team leader," Weiss stated.

Blake's eyebrow quirked at her. "Yes…"

"So we're, um… we're ground zero of her friendship powers."

There had to be a better way of saying what she meant. That they were so exposed to Ruby and her peppiness that they _had_ to find a way to become friends. If they couldn't, then…

"Friendship powers?" Blake grinned. "She _has_ gotten to you."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "She has not!"

"Mm." Blake turned her chair and sat facing Weiss, clasping her hands together and leaning on her elbows. "She told me that… your dad isn't… um, much of a dad."

Weiss sighed. "That's not really something she should go around saying."

"No, probably not," Blake agreed.

"If she tells too many people and something gets out and public perception of my fath-"

"Weiss."

Weiss stopped and settled her fidgeting hands.

"I don't really care about your ffff-" Blake cut herself off and took a deep breath. "Sorry. I just…"

"You might not care about his reputation, but I do. I have a family legacy to uphold. I _have _to care."

Blake nodded again. "I know what that's like," she whispered.

"You do?"

What did that mean? Who were Blake's parents?

"A bit. Not the same as being the heiress to the biggest business empire in the world. I'm sure that's not easy."

"No," Weiss replied with a swallow.

"I'm sure your father is an impressive, talented, intelligent man, and you probably have to be the same if you want to take over some day."

"Yes."

Again, Blake nodded. "That doesn't mean you have to be _exactly_ like him, you know."

"I know that," Weiss huffed. What was she suggesting?

"Right. Like I'm sure you want to be a better parent. I-if you ever have kids."

Weiss blinked. "Sure." She hadn't really given that much thought at all, but yes, if she did ever become a mother then she'd want to be nicer to her children than her father was to her.

"And you probably want to have a nicer reputation than I hear he has with his employees and business partners and whatnot."

Weiss nodded again.

"And… his views on faunus."

The statement hung in the air, heavy.

Weiss didn't respond.

"Those are something you shouldn't hold on to either," Blake finished.

Weiss scoffed. "According to you."

Blake closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She was clearly trying to swallow her anger.

Woops.

"Yes," Blake said. "According to me and anyone else with a moral center."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It mea-it-sorry. Sorry." Blake sighed and put her fingers to her temples. "I meant… I know that you've had bad experiences with faunus, Weiss. You just need to understand that they're not… they're not all bad. Just like there are bad humans like-there are bad humans, but they're not all bad."

"Ruby said the same thing," Weiss sighed.

"Well even a goofball like her can be right sometimes."

That made Weiss smile a little bit. "I think Yang is the goofball influence."

Blake snorted. "Pretty sure it's a vicious cycle of goofy between the two of them."

"Fair."

Another long silence stretched between them.

"Look," Blake finally sighed, "my point is that faunus and White Fang aren't the same thing, okay? Just like humans, faunus are _people_, people that range from good to bad, and there are a lot more good ones than bad ones, okay?"

Weiss was tempted to point out that they _weren't_ people, they were human-animal hybrids, but… Ruby had said that being human and being a person weren't the same. It seemed like Blake was saying that here, too.

So what was she supposed to say instead?

Five seconds passed before she nodded numbly.

Blake frowned at her. "You don't really use facial expressions much, do you?"

Shaking her head, Weiss exhaled a light laugh. No, though Ruby always seemed to know what Weiss was feeling, even if she couldn't figure out why.

Just then, Weiss' scroll startled both her and Blake with a ring.

Winter.

Crap, Weiss hadn't called Winter after last night. Why hadn't she done that?

She looked at Blake, who raised her hands in a 'go ahead' gesture.

Weiss nodded and quickly answered the call.

"Hello, Winter."

"Good evening, Weiss. How are you?"

How was she? She'd just been berated by father, had her awful family circumstances exposed to her team, had to sit through an awful conversation with Yang, had pissed off Blake _again_, had been ordered to befriend a cretin for the sake of the business, had watched people _die_ last night, and was still worried about how Ruby was handling that whole thing.

"I'm fine," she answered.

"Mm. I saw an article about you-"

"Oh nooo," Weiss groaned. "Is it the idiocy about me being out on a date with a girl last night?"

"I-well, yes. I didn't put too much stock in that though, just tabloids being greedy clickbait idiots."

Weiss sighed in relief. "Thank you. I wish Father had been the same."

"Did he give you a hard time?" Winter asked worriedly.

"Naturally. I told him I had just been out with Ruby, but he didn't care. But I think it'll be okay. I just wish he'd paid more attention to the fact that we stopped a known serial killer and saved someone's life, because that seems… significant."

"It is, yes," Winter agreed. "And that's the real reason I'm calling."

"Oh?"

"I saw the police report. Multiple dead, killer escaped, and two young huntresses that left the scene in what is described by the officer as a state of mild shock. Are you okay?"

"How'd you get the police report?" Weiss blurted.

"I asked the right people. Are you okay?" Winter repeated.

"I am. I wasn't… only one of the victims died while we were there, and they were all a bunch of criminals anyway. Ruby's taking it harder, though. I think she's okay now, but she asked me to stay awake with her last night because she didn't want to close her eyes."

"Oh dear."

"Yes. I think she's doing better now." Weiss looked over at the incomplete board game that was still laid out on the floor in the middle of the room. "We played some board games before Father called and… distracted everyone." She glanced at Blake, then quickly away.

"Ah. Did your teammates get… _exposed_ to… him?"

Weiss sighed. "Yes."

She could almost feel Winter's grimace from across the scroll. "My condolences."

Weiss laughed aloud at that. "Yes. It was unfortunate. Did _your_ team ever…"

Shit. Why had Weiss said that? Why did she bring up Winter's dead teammates?

"... get exposed to him?" she finished automatically, voice pitched down to a hush.

"..."

"Winter?"

Crap. She'd messed up.

"Sorry," Winter said. "I just… haven't heard you laugh like that in years."

'_Oh.'_

"... Oh."

"It's just nice to hear again." Winter cleared her throat. "But in answer to your question, yes, but it was in our third year, so they held no judgement against me because of him."

"Ah."

"I know how you feel about therapists, but have you and Ruby considered talking to someone about last night? Watching people die can be… unbalancing."

"We did talk about it, actually," Weiss said, happy that she'd done something her sister might approve of. "The police captain that we talked to offered to give us the information for a department counselor."

"And?"

"And neither of us want to. I really am fine, and Ruby… well Ruby didn't want to, whatever her reasons."

"Well her wanting it and needing it are two different things, Weiss."

Weiss sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I knowww. But I don't want to be pushy."

"A push might be what she needs, though," Winter counselled.

"But it's Ruby. If she goes she's going to insist I go with her."

"That may not be a bad thing," Winter said gently.

Darn, Weiss had trapped herself. She didn't really have a good argument against this other than she simply 'didn't want to'. The prospect of talking to a stranger about her feelings and getting psychoanalyzed was…

"Ugh."

"Ugh?" Winter repeated, a bemused note in her voice. "Since when do you say 'ugh'?"

"Since you started saying exceptionally ugh-y things," Weiss answered, thinking that was a very Ruby phrase and smiling to herself.

"... Well then. I suppose that's… a thing," Winter stumbled.

Weiss laughed again. Winter was hardly ever confused about what to say or do, and here Weiss had perplexed her with a single not-word. Is this how Ruby felt when she was talking to Weiss? It was delightful.

"How is everything else?" Winter asked, regaining her composure.

What Weiss _really_ wanted to talk about was Blake and this whole… faunus business, but Blake was still her, now quietly reading a book on her bed. Weiss could leave, but… she was trying to extend an olive branch.

Which meant not leaving _and_ not bringing it up.

She had other things to talk about, though.

"Good. Professor Rustheart had us spar against our partners on Friday and I fought Ruby, and it was actually very… fun."

"Oh? Did you win?"

"Of course I won," Weiss huffed indignantly. "But it was a very enjoyable fight."

"You should mention the cat-fighting bit," Blake teased lightly from her corner.

"Quiet, you."

"What was that?" Winter asked.

"Nothing!"

"Hmph. Well I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. How were your other teammates? Blake and… Yang, correct?"

"Yes. They were also impressive. Blake is incredibly fast and acrobatic-" she glanced back over at Blake, who watched her carefully but with a small smile "-and Yang is…"

"Terrifying?" Blake offered.

"Ha! Yes. Yang is terrifying."

There was the sound of a drawer opening, then closing from Winter's side. "Terrifying how?"

"She's just… insanely strong and deceptively fast and her semblance makes her more and more dangerous the longer you fight her."

"What is her semblance?"

"When she gets hit she can store that damage as energy-with some strange conversion rate based on how much aura she's missing-and she can release the energy to hit incredibly hard. I think there's a bit of a kinetic blast along with it, because she punched a crater into the ground."

"Oh. That's… impressive. Can you take her?"

"Of course! She's still an oaf."

Weiss was _fairly_ confident she could take Yang. Like, 85% positive. But she didn't want Winter to know about her 15% of uncertainty.

"Hm. Well, very nice. I'm glad you're getting to know your team, and it sounds like they're all capable individuals."

"They are," Weiss said proudly. "And the professor said we'd be be sparring against another team this coming Wednesday. I'm hoping to fight Pyrrha Nikos."

"You _must_ tell me how that goes," Winter said eagerly.

"I will!"

"Better yet, you should take a video and send it to me. Does Beacon record your fights for you to review?"

"They do, yes." Ruby had the video Professor Awe-Rustheart had sent her, though it was just sitting on her scroll forgotten. They'd planned on watching that today, actually… Before breakfast yesterday Ruby had made the Executive Decision that Saturday was to be their relaxing day out and they'd watch the video together Sunday night. Then Saturday had actually happened, and with this tension between her and Blake now, Weiss wasn't sure if that was still the plan. Though Blake seemed to be civil now. Maybe they'd still do that after Ruby and Yang got back.

""I have the video of my fight with Ruby, too," Weiss said. "W-would you like to see that too?" Winter reviewing her fight would be… invaluable.

"Absolutely," Winter answered immediately.

"Looking forward to telling me all the things I did wrong?" Weiss said, only kind of joking.

"_Did_ you do anything wrong?" Winter asked.

"No!"

"Well then why would I tell you that you did?"

Weiss huffed. "I don't knowww. It was a joke!"

"Hmph. You tell jokes now, too. Who are you and what have you done with my sister?"

"Oh, shut up."

Winter chuckled. "But in all seriousness, please send those videos. I'd love to see you fight. And Ruby, too. I'm curious."

"I'll have Ruby give them to me so I can send them through our CCT channel as soon as she gets back."

"Excellent. I look forward to it. Now am I stealing you from anything important?"

"Not really. I was just…" Weiss looked over to where the canvas she hid along the wall was tucked away, barely visible, "... painting."

"_Painting_? Really? I hadn't realized you'd picked it up again."

"I mentioned that I used to paint with you to Ruby and the dolt decided to get me a set of acrylics as a gift, so… so I figured I'd use them."

"That was kind of her," Winter remarked.

"Yes. Yes it was."

"How's it going?"

Weiss sighed. "Terrible. I'm trying to paint a landscape image of Beacon, but I can't do anything right. The ocean looks flat, the clouds look like white vomit, the island's practically a poop emoji-"

Winter snorted a laugh.

"It's not funny!"

"I'm sorry! You're right, it's not. It was just an amusing description. If you'd like, you can send me pictures and I could give you some advice?"

'_Great, so I can have another reminder of how much better you are than me at everything.'_

Weiss swallowed past her bitter pride and recognized her sister's offer for the kindness it was. She was probably incredibly busy, yet she was still offering to take time out of her day to help Weiss at a skill she knew Weiss was helpless at.

"I'll send it to you once I'm finished."

"Sensational."

Weiss blinked. "What?"

Winter chuckled again. "Nothing. It's something one of my wards says. Speaking of which, duty calls. I have to go."

"Of course. Thank you for calling."

"My pleasure, as always. I love you."

Weiss smiled. "And I, you."

The scroll clicked.

After a long moment of happy silence, Blake asked, "Who was that?"

"My sister."

Blake, not being the nosy little butt that Ruby was, hadn't sat down and leaned into Weiss' face to listen in on the call, so she would have only heard Weiss' side of the-

"She sounded nice," Blake commented.

Wait…

"You could hear her?" Weiss hadn't put the call on speaker...

Blake's eyes widened a bit, then she shoved her book into her nose. "Oh, you know. A little bit. Not really."

... Blake was strange.

But at least she was okay with being in the same room as Weiss now.

Weiss pulled out her scroll to message Ruby.

Weiss: Hello, Ruby. Are we still going to watch the battle videos from Friday later tonight?

It took a couple minutes before she got a response, which made sense considering Ruby was probably busy being jostled and deafened by sweaty sports fanatics.

Ruby: Greetings, Weiss. I, Captain Ruby of Team RWBY, doth declareth that we shall watcheth the aforementioned article of video and audible media together at a later hour.

Ruby: Forsooth.

Weiss sighed. Declareth? Video and _audible_?

Forsooth?

Weiss looked back at the message she sent and realized that starting with 'Hello, Ruby.' was probably a little on the formal side. That was probably what inspired Ruby's ridiculous reply.

Her partner was an absolute dolt.

Weiss: Winter asked for the video of us fighting. She'd like to see it. I told her we'd send it later tonight.

Ruby: o neat! Ok!

Weiss: When will you be back, by the way?

Ruby: Games done in 3 mins. So like an hour?

Okay. Soon. Not too long for Weiss and Blake to be alone together, which was probably good. Blake was being civil now, but-

Ruby: U want some cotton candy? I can grab 1 on way out!

Weiss couldn't help smiling at that. Of course she didn't want cotton candy, but the image of Ruby carrying a wad of the stuff through the city shuttle was amusing. And incredibly unlikely. There was no way she would make it back here without inhaling the sugar.

Weiss: I'd love some, thank you.

Grinning maniacally at her own response, Weiss chuckled to herself when Ruby eagerly replied a second later.

Ruby: :D

Ruby: wut color?!

Ruby: prolly blue rite?

Ruby: we gotta hurry to get in line Ill get blue

Weiss: Blue would be great.

In all honesty, Weiss wasn't even sure what colors cotton candy came in. Did it even have an impact on the flavor?

Either way, it wasn't going to make it back to Beacon in any form other than in Ruby's stomach, so it didn't really matter.

A few minutes later, Weiss' scroll dinged again.

Ruby had sent her a picture of herself holding a wad of fluffy blue sugar on a stick triumphantly in the air. Yang was standing next to her, arms crossed, her deadpan gaze at the camera lens saying 'I'm so tired of this bozo'.

Ruby: on our way with ur magnicifent gift!

Magnicifent. Weiss smiled again.

Poor Yang looked so done. The longer Weiss looked at the girl's face, the funnier it became. She walked over to Blake's bed to show her the picture and the following message.

Blake, after her eyebrows quirking up in surprise at Weiss approach, squinted at the screen. She let out a laugh.

"Yang's lookin' pretty, uh…"

"Yeah," Weiss agreed.

"You asked Ruby for cotton candy?"

Weiss tilted her head in a shrug. "More like she offered and I was curious to see if she could actually get it back here without eating it."

Blake giggled a bit. "A social experiment, eh? Should I message Yang and ask for one too?"

"Yes!" Weiss said delightedly. "That's brilliant."

Fishing her scroll out of her pocket, Blake shot off a quick message.

"But Yang's responsible enough and not addicted enough to sugar to get it back here," she said with a smirk. "So I'm gonna win."

"Win _what_?!"

"The… best partner award?"

"Pfft. She's probably going to drop it. Or get angry at some random pedestrian on the train and smack them with it."

Blake nodded slowly, thoughtfully squinting her eyes. "There's… a non-zero chance that you're right."

Grinning, Weiss headed back to her desk.

She'd gotten through a completely normal, even funny conversation with Blake! That was progress, right? Or at least, a return to normal.

Maybe there was hope.


	26. Thaw 2-10

"Why do heroes always let you down?" Yang lamented once again from where she stood in front of Ruby's seat on the train.

She was taking the Hatotaun Heroes' loss pretty hard.

Honestly, Ruby hadn't paid too much attention to the game. She'd been busy running around the stands with Nora, and when she hadn't been doing that she'd been inhaling sugar-either in cotton candy or soda form. Yang and Ren had tried to get them to stay in their seats, but…

LUL, nope.

"At least Pixy played well," Jaune sighed. Apparently he was a big Heroes fan too.

Pyrrha sat quietly smiling to herself, trying not to draw attention to herself and the fact that she was the only Danto Dancers fan in the whole world. Or at least the only one in Vale. Apparently she was actually from Mistral, which is where Danto is, but evidently it was still terrible to be a fan of them, if the hour long argument she and Jaune had had about it was any indication.

"Yay," Yang said flatly. "_One_ player of seven wasn't a complete invalid. Woot."

"Hey, I'm just saying!"

Ruby tuned out their conversation. They were heading back to Beacon. Ruby and Yang had cotton candy sticks for their partners, Weiss' blue and Blake's pink. Yang was casually holding hers and not really paying attention to it. Ruby was having a hard time ignoring hers, though.

It looked so fluffy! And tasty! And blue!

Weiss wouldn't eat the _whole_ thing, right? She ate, like, super tiny amounts of food. For real, she never finished her plate! Except her morning grapefruits. She somehow managed to eat those whole things, which were just giant gross balls of bitter.

But she definitely wouldn't finish the whole wad of cotton candy! In fact, getting rid of some of it might be a kind thing to do, so she wouldn't feel obligated to eat too much…. Right?

That totally made sense!

So really, if Ruby were to take one or two _teensy weensy_ bites, it would be a service! They would be selfless bites. Friendship bites!

It all added up. Ruby should have some cotton candy.

She pinched some off with her fingers-Weiss probably wouldn't like her just biting into it like she normally would. Her fingers would be a lil' bit sticky, but that was a sacrifice she was willing to make in the name of friendship! And sugar.

"Ruby."

Ruby froze, the tuft of cotton candy a meer nanominitiny-meter from her mouth, her eyes going wide and darting up to Yang, who was frowning down at her.

"I think you had enough ot that today. Isn't that supposed to be for Weiss?"

Pouting, Ruby pulled the cotton candy away from her face. "Yeah, but she's not gonna eat _all_ of it," she whined.

"How do you know that? You get a future sight semblance from all the sugar you had today?"

"No, it's Weiss!"

Yang frowned. "Hm."

"Wait, is that a thing? Can I get another semblance if I eat enough sugar?"

Light left Yang's eyes looked like she died on the inside as she hung her head and sighed. "No, Ruby. That's not a thing."

"Darn," Nora muttered sitting next to Ruby. "I was _so_ ready to eat _all _the sugar."

Ruby beamed at her friend. "Me too!"

Nora was awesome. She was a lot like Ruby! Super energetic and happy. And it turned out they liked a lot of the same things! She was kinda super competitive though. Like, even more competitive than Yang, and somehow more energetic than Ruby. She challenged Ruby to a "how fast can you eat this cotton candy" competition, and of course Ruby accepted, 'cause… duh. But it turns out Ruby enjoyed cotton candy a lot more when she was actually able to taste it, not just trying to vacuum cleaner it into her stomach. And then after Nora had won she'd challenged Ruby to a soda drinking competition _and _a hot dog eating competition in the same breath, and at that point… it was a little much.

She was still super nice though!

"Don't you think Weiss would be upset that you're eating the cotton candy you got for _her_?" Yang pressed.

"Um… no?" Ruby wasn't actually sure about that. Weiss did seem to like her things and could get pretty possessive, but on the other hand she seemed to enjoy indulging Ruby's sweet tooth. So which one would be more important here?

The answer didn't really seem to convince Yang. She raised a dubious eyebrow.

"I don't know!" Ruby squeaked.

"Hmph. When she gets all Weiss-y and yells at you for eating her gift, I _will_ say 'I told you so'."

"Yeah, well… pbbt!" Ruby blew a raspberry at her sister, then nommed on the cotton candy sticking her fingers together. Embarrassingly, it took a couple licks to get the stuff off her fingers. Kinda diluted the dramaticness of the moment.

There was a good chance Yang was right and that Weiss would yell at her when they got back, but at this point Ruby was committed.

…. Was she, though?

Well, that's what she was going with, 'cause that meant she got to have more nibbles of cotton candy.

While the others talked to each other, Ruby zoned out a bit. She'd always found train rides-and even car rides, sometimes-to be incredibly relaxing. In fact, she was getting a little sleepy. She'd eaten a bunch and run around a bunch and might be having one of those mythical "sugar crashes" that Dad kept trying to convince her were a thing.

Blinking blearily, Ruby smiled and took another bite of yummy cloud as she thought about how good this day had ended up so far. They'd had fun pancakes, which were great, then board games, which were also great, even to salty Weiss. Then Weiss' dad had called and kinda spoiled the mood. But Ruby had talked to Blake, and felt like things would get better! And Weiss seemed okay. And then she and Yang had gone to the game, which was great! And Yang had sent Dad a video of Ruby semblancing across the seats of the stadium to go get more stuff to eat, which had gotten about ten "lolol"s from him, so that was kinda cool. And apparently Weiss and Blake were coexisting in a room together from the way they'd both requested cotton candy from their partners within a couple minutes of each other.

And when they got back they could watch the videos of their fights from Friday! Ruby loved watching fights-that was something she and Uncle Qrow would always do together whenever he came by. Yang and Dad also enjoyed them, though they preferred boxing exclusively for some dumb reason. Something about an "even playing field" and "winning on prowess alone" or some such nonsense. So dumb! Different weapons and semblances and Dust casting is what made fights so interesting!

And Weiss and Blake both had fighting styles that were very different from Ruby's and Yang's, so they'd be super cool to watch! And she hadn't gotten to watch Weiss' fighting from the outside, which would be a really different perspective from where she'd stood before getting stabbed repeatedly by Myrtenaster.

That had kinda sucked. Yet that fight had still been _mega_ fun! Seriously, Ruby wanted to spar Weiss again. And Blake! Maybe the team could play a special game of tag where they had to see who would be the first one to hit Blake.

Ruby would probably win. She was super fast. Unless Yang used her shotguns. Or Weiss might just bury the world in ice. Could Blake dodge a sniper rifle, though? Maybe Ruby could tag her.

Maybe there should be a melee hit only rule…

"Escyooze me, miss."

Ruby jerked her eyes open and head back. "Wha? Who, me?" She looked toward where the voice had come from on her left to find a little girl standing there. She had pink hair done in cute little pigtails and was wearing overalls over a purple shirt. She probably wasn't any older than six. Maybe four? Ruby had no idea how to judge age...

"Hi," she said in a tiny voice.

"Hey!" Ruby greeted her with a smile. "What's up?"

The little girl pointed at the cotton candy. "Where you get that? Mommy says she'll get some th-th-the next time we go shopping." She'd run out of breath in the middle of her 'the' and tried to power through it.

"Oh! We got these at Vale City Stadium. There was a game today."

The little girl smiled and nodded quickly, then ran away, down the train car and into the arms of a woman that Ruby assumed was her mother, who was watching attentively with a smile, some shopping bags in the seat next to her. The girl babbled something to her and her face fell a bit. She scooped the girl into her lap and said something that made the little girl frown, which quickly devolved into her whining and pouting.

The mom had probably just told her they wouldn't be able to go get cotton candy from the stadium while they were shopping…

Ruby looked down at her cotton candy. Maybe…

She stood and walked over to the two.

"Miss?" she asked the mother. She held up her cotton candy. "I can give her mine, if that would help."

The little girl's eyes lit up, but the mother quickly shook her head.

"No, thank you so much though. She'll be okay."

"Mommyyy!"

"Ssssh!"

It was then that Ruby felt somebody behind her. She turned to find Yang smiling down at the little girl too.

"She can have mine," she offered. "It doesn't have random chunks taken out of it." She teasingly squinted at Ruby at that.

Oh. Huh. There was quite a bit missing from Ruby's stick. Hadn't she only taken, like, two bites? Why was almost half of it gone?!

"It's okay, really," the mom said again. "You're both very sweet, but she'll be fine."

The little girl crossed her arms and pouted.

"We used to bring her to Hazel's Sweets after we did our shopping, but we've been having trouble finding another spot since they closed down."

"Valesie Estaydum!" the girl squeaked, kicking her legs.

"That's not a candy shop, sweetheart," the mom sighed, putting a hand on top of the girl's head as if to subdue her.

"Are you sure you don't want this?" Yang asked, holding up her pink waft of candy. "I'm happy to-"

"Yes peas!" the girl chirped, extending her arms out.

The mom sighed and pushed the girl's hands down with a kind smile. "I'm sure. Thank you both, really truly."

"You know, there's a really awesome cookie shop that my friend brought me to," Ruby mentioned. "It's over b-"

"Rubes."

"Hm?"

"That place is _really_ expensive."

"Oh, right."

"What's it called?" the mom asked. "We could try it for a special treat sometimes."

"Cookies!" the girl agreed.

Ruby looked to Yang for permission and received a nod.

"It's called Wafer's Treats! The baker's name is _ackshually_ Mister Wafer, and he's super nice."

"We'll check it out, thank you," the mom said with another smile.

Ruby gave her a big grin. "No problem!"

"C'mon, Rubes," Yang said, turning slowly back to their spots. "Bye, lil' cutie," she added, giving the little girl a tiny wave.

"Bai!" the girl replied with a wave of her own.

Waving back, Ruby headed back to her seat. That girl was pretty cute, she definitely deserved some super awesome cookies. Hopefully she had her own Weiss as a best friend.

Speaking of Weiss!

Ruby checked her scroll to see if Weiss had sent her any more messages.

None. Pooey.

She reread Weiss' first message, with its adorable 'Hello, Ruby.' So formal! Like anyone else would have Ruby's scroll anyway.

Weiss' texts were so cute. All punctuationy and capitaliz...ationy? And apparently Winter wanted to see their fight together! That was pretty neat! And… also kind of embarrassing. Weiss kinda clowned on her. At least a little.

And there was that slappy bit…

Hmm…

Maybe the video could use some editing before the sent it to Weiss' super powerful special ops ninja assassin warlock mage fighter sister.

Now that Ruby thought about it, she had no idea how Weiss' sister fought. Was she a ninja assassin? Weiss definitely wasn't. She was more mage-fightery. So maybe Winter was the same? And hadn't Weiss said Winter can summon armies of spirits or something? That was kinda warlocky.

Maybe they could trade fight videos! Weiss versus Ruby fight for a video of Winter fighting someone so they could see how cool she is!

On that topic…

"Hey guys, how did your sparring matches go on Friday?" she asked Team JNPR.

Jaune, who'd been talking about something Ruby hadn't been paying attention to with Yang and Nora, immediately slumped forward.

"No, guys," he grumbled. "Don't answer her. We're passed the statute of limitations on that."

"That bad, huh?" Yang smirked, extending a hand out to fist bump Pyrrha. Pyrrha just blinked at the fist in front of her, blushing like she was embarrassed but wearing a proud little smile.

"Let's just say it went _exactly_ like you think it did," Nora answered with a big grin.

As she said that, Ren absent-mindedly rubbed his side with a grimace.

'_Oof.'_

"So Jaune flexed on Pyrrha and Ren slapped Nora around with a giant pancake?" Yang teased.

"Totally," Jaune muttered at his lap.

"For the record, I wouldn't mind Ren slapping me around with a giant pancake," Nora quipped, shoulder bumping Ren.

"But why would I attack you with a weapon you would just eat while I was hitting you?" Ren asked with his typical chill voice and demeanor.

"I'm not trying to _explain_ it, silly! I'm just saying I'd be happy if it happened! Dreams usually don't make sense."

"So you're gonna dream about me beating you with a pancake?"

"Mayyyyyybe."

"Nora?" Jaune interjected.

"Yeah?"

"You're very strange."

"Yeah."

Ruby tuned them out and went back to reading through the messages from her bestest bestie. Had it been long enough for her to send another? Probably.

Ruby: whatchu up to?

Seconds passed. Five. Ten. Thirty. Ruby's foot started anxiously tapping. Was she not supposed to message again so soon? She'd sent the last message, so was she supposed to wait for Weiss to say something back before messaging again. She didn't want to get annoying…

Just then, her scroll dinged and she excitedly pulled it open again.

Weiss: Not much. Blake and I are just talking and waiting for you two to get back.

Ruby kicked her feet in a little dance. Weiss and Blake were talking! And not killing each other! Woohoo!

Weiss: How fares my cotton candy?

Ruby giggled a little bit at Weiss' wording again. 'How fares?' So adorkable!

Then she froze as she realized she was munching on the cotton candy in question.

Woops.

It wasn't her fault! It was natural instinct to eat sweets that were in her hand! And now… now there was only half of the stick left…

Dang nabbit.

Ruby: Good! Really good. Very blue.

All true! The cotton candy was quite good. And quite blue.

She still felt a little guilty though…

Fifteen minutes later the little girl and her mom got off at a stop, both giving Yang and Ruby friendly waves as they departed.

Ten minutes later and the train reached the end of the line-Beacon.

The six of them hopped off together, the only ones on the train here for this stop. Once again, Ruby was struck by how awesome Beacon looked, with it's towers and archways and domes and stuff. It was like a palace out of a fairy tale! And she got to live here!

Before too long, both teams were at their doors across the hall from each other.

"See ya, guys," Yang said to Team JNPR as she unlocked their room. "Thanks for inviting us."

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed.

"No problem. Thanks for coming," Jaune replied. He turned to Ruby with a serious expression. "And thanks for keeping Nora busy."

"Hey!"

Ruby let out a little giggle and a wave before busting open the door to their room.

Weiss and Blake were both sitting on their beds, backs against pillows against the wall. Weiss had her laptop on her lap while Blake was, of course, reading a book, though she had homework pages and their Dust Theory textbook arrayed around her. They both looked up at her expectantly with raised eyebrows-it was actually kinda hilarious how similar their expressions looked.

"Hello, Ruby," Weiss greeted her in her typical princessy manner.

"Hi!"

Ruby skipped over and plopped herself down next to Weiss on the edge of her bed and faced Blake, who was greeting Yang.

"Is that my cotton candy?" Weiss asked in surprise.

Grinning, Ruby held it out to her. "Yep! Have at it, m'lady."

Weiss' eyebrows seemed to be permanently stuck in an arch of surprise, but she reached out to gingerly grab it with a narrowed squint.

"Is it _supposed_ to be so much smaller than Blake's?"

…

Okay, so one, crap. Ruby was caught! But two, did Weiss not really know how big a stick of cotton candy was supposed to be?

"Oh, ya know," Yang started answering, "'cause Ruby-"

"Got you the small one!" Ruby butted in. "'Cause you don't eat much."

"Why is it all lumpy?" Weiss asked as she looked down at her gift, referring to the spots where Ruby had taken bites out of it.

"Um... Becaaaaause…"

"Because Ruby ate some of it," Yang the Traitor said as she sat down on Blake's bed and handed her partner her big, pink, unnibbled tuft of cotton candy.

"Yang-uh!"

The maniacal grin Yang shot her was one of Pure Evil. "What?! What happened to 'always tell the truth', huh?"

Ruby gave a fake sniffle and patted Weiss' knee. "I was trying to _protect_ her from the truth!" she replied, making her voice sound like she was crying.

"You're a dolt," Weiss sighed next to her.

A happy wiggle shot through Ruby, and she scooted over and pulled her legs up onto the bed to sit next to Weiss. It was kind of awkward 'cause she was hanging over the edge a bit, but Weiss, after giving Ruby an annoyed glare, scooched over a bit to give her room to sit.

"Whatcha workin' on?" Ruby asked.

Weiss had some super wordy document open, two pages displayed side by side on the screen in Blank Slate Word. Ruby didn't even know you could do that.

"Oh, just looking over the papers my father sent me to read."

She didn't seem all that happy about it, but she was apparently on pages seven/eight of twelve, so she was making good time on it anyway.

She was also pretty distracted by the cotton candy in her hands.

"How am I supposed to eat this? Is there… did you bring a fork?"

The deafening snort into bellowing laughter that Ruby let out startled everyone in the room-Weiss particularly.

"You don't-_what_? Bahahaha! You don't need a f-fork, Weiss! Snnnckt-ahahahaha!"

Yang started laughing too. "She asked for a fork?"

Ruby nodded her head, unable to breath enough to make more words because of her laugher.

Yang kept laughing, and Yang's laughter made Ruby double over and laugh even harder, leaning into Weiss because the alternative was to fall off the bed.

Weiss huffed, her eyebrows pulling together and her lower lip puffing out a bit.

"Well, I don't want to use my hands! It's all… sticky!"

The sisters' laughter renewed at Weiss' disapproving tone at her observation, but Blake cleared her throat.

"Stop bein' bullies, you two. She's right." Blake poked at her pink puff of candy, then pulled her finger away with a grimace and a small _hissss_. "This is grossly sticky."

"But it's delicious!" Ruby reassured her. Stickiness is a small price to pay for sugary goodness.

"It just smells like sugar," Weiss argued.

"Yeah!"

"I'm gonna have to wash my hands a billion times before I can touch a book again," Blake bemoaned.

"Oh no," Yang drawled sarcastically. "That would just be the worst, wouldn't it. Having to pull your nose out of a book for a lil' bit and say hi to your partner."

Blake's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed as she and Yang glared at each other, one suspicious, the other playful.

"But we already said hi."

Golden locks splayed around as Yang shook her head vigorously. "Nuh-uh, _I _said hi. _You_ just blinked at me and then took held your hand out for the cotton candy."

Blake frowned a tiny bit. "But it was a long, slow, 'hello' blink."

"Words are nice too, sometimes, ya know," Yang said. "You read 'em so much. Try usin' them a little."

With a sigh, Blake rolled her eyes and tossed her book onto the bookcase, grasping her cotton candy with both hands and crossing her legs, scooting around a bit to give Yang more space on her bed.

"Okay, fine..." She covered half her face from Yang's view with her tuft of pink sugar and batted her eyelashes. "... Hi."

Now it was Yang that narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Now you're just mocking me."

"I would never!"

"How am I supposed to eat this?!" Weiss wailed suddenly.

Another giggle slipped out of Ruby again, and she bumped Weiss' shoulder with her own. "Just use your fingers, silly!"

Weiss' cute little nose scrunched up in disgust, then she timidly poked the cotton candy with a slender finger.

"Uggh," she muttered, pulling away as soon she made contact. She stared at the tip of her finger like it was a worm growing out of her hand or something. "... Ugh," she repeated. "I need a napkin. A wet one."

"Just lick it off your finger, Weiss!" Ruby suggested. It was a really obvious and simple solution.

Weiss' eyes widened and she looked at Ruby in horror. It made Ruby giggle again.

Turning away, Weiss shook her head disapprovingly. "Absolute heathen," she muttered under her breath.

Ruby rolled her eyes at her partner's dramatics. "You can always just bite out of it without touching it, ya goofball."

Weiss grimaced again. "Fiiiiine," she sighed, as though she'd been expecting that sort of answer but just didn't want to hear it.

Scrunching up her nose again and closing her eyes, Weiss leaned forward to take the _tiniest_ bite in the world, making sure to not let any of if touch the sides of her mouth. After the bite, she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter and just sat there frozen for a long moment, then started slowly smacking her lips together like she was trying to get the taste off her tongue. Her nose wasn't unscrunching.

Which was weird, right? Sure, cotton candy might be an un-Weissy thing to eat, but now that she's tasted she should be, like, all 'Wow this is so yummy! Thanks for getting this for me, Ruby!'

But she looked even more grossed out than before.

"Bleck!" Weiss spat. "It's _just_ sugar!"

"... Yeah!"

"Yuck."

"But… I thought you _liked_ sweets!" Ruby whined. She'd really wanted Weiss to like the cotton candy. She wasn't really sure why, though-maybe it would be something that Weiss didn't like that Ruby convinced her to like? Kinda like what she hoped to do with faunus.

"Sweets are fine, Ruby. But there's a difference between sweets and just straight sugar! Sugar's fine when combined with other things, but this… this is just too much."

Ruby blinked.

"... That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

Chuckling, Weiss rolled her eyes. "You're ridiculous," she said softly. "Here, you can finish the rest of this. You already ate most of it anyway." She handed Ruby back the cotton candy, but Ruby didn't take it.

"But… I got it for you! You asked for it!"

Weiss' gave her a guilty grin. "Well… I didn't really _want_ it. I just wanted to see if you'd be able to get it back here without eating it. And Blake and I decided to see which of the two of you could bring us a cotton candy."

Ruby's jaw dropped in disbelief. The dishonesty! They were being experimented on!

She looked over at Yang, who'd cut off whatever quiet conversation she was having with Blake to look back at her.

"You lost, by the way," Weiss added in her sing-song voice.

"Wah!"

Blake nodded with a smug smile. "I have the best partner," she declared.

Weiss huffed, but didn't argue. Why didn't she argue?!

"Weiss, don't let her say that!" Ruby squeaked.

"Well, the criteria we set up for determining the best partner was 'who will manage to bring back a cotton candy for us', and Yang did better."

"But I _did_ bring you back a cotton candy!"

"Yeah, _half _of one."

"But you don't even _want _it!"

"That's not the point!"

"Yang is basically twice as good a partner as Ruby," Blake pondered, still with that smug little smile that made Yang beam.

"Heehee," Yang replied, kicking her feet, then she stuck her tongue out at Ruby.

Ruby pouted. "Ya'll suck."

"Did you guys think _I'd_ eat the cotton candy before we made it back?" Yang wondered aloud.

"No, we just thought you might hit somebody with it," Blake answered simply.

Yang blinked at her partner. "That's just rude."

Blake let out a little giggle and poked Yang's ribs with a toe. "C'mon, you saying you wouldn't smack someone in the face with a wad of cotton candy?"

"Not for no reason!"

"She tried to give her cotton candy away!" Ruby blurted.

"What? Why?" Weiss asked.

"There was a little girl on the train that wanted some, and Yang tried to give hers away!" Ruby tattled.

"What?! You did too, ya doof!" Yang shot back.

"Yeah, but you tried harder."

"Yeah, 'cause I didn't want you giving your half eaten cotton candy full of Ruby germs to a stranger!"

"Your face is Ruby germs!"

Weiss sighed loudly next to her.

"Whatever!" Ruby yelled, not giving anyone a chance to say anything else. "Gimme that candy!" She grabbed her wonderful, unwanted gift out of Weiss' hands.

"Hey! Don't be whiny," Weiss chastised her.

"_You_ don't be whiny!"

"Ruby, it's just a joke. You're _obviously _the best partner."

"Hey!" Yang protested.

Ruby squinted suspiciously at Weiss. She was just saying that. She didn't mean it. And she _definitely_ didn't joke. At least, not on purpose. Sometimes she was funny, but on accident.

And this wasn't even funny!

But Weiss reached out to give Ruby's back a little rub and gave her a small smile.

Okay, maybe she _did_ mean it.

"The _best_ partner?" Ruby clarified.

Weiss nodded, keeping that small smile that was super cute and friendly.

"Now, would you mind being the _best_ best partner and getting me a napkin?" Weiss held up the pointer finger she'd poked her cotton candy with.

"Sure!" Ruby chirped. "Hold this for me." She handed back the cotton candy stick, the slipped into her Rose Form and darted for the kitchen. She grabbed a paper towel, ran it under the water real quick, then sprinted back to their room before the door had even swung closed, then skipped back to her spot at Weiss' side.

"Thank you," Weiss said graciously. "See? Best partner. Yang would've taken _way_ longer to get this."

"Heehee," Ruby beamed, giving Weiss' arm a hug.

"How 'bout you just bring your finger over here and let me punch it off," Yang threatened. "Won't be dirty then."

"Wouldn't it still be dirty, but just off her body?" Blake asked.

"... Semantics."

"_Anyway_, you guys want to watch the fight videos?" Weiss asked.

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed readily.

"I'm down," Yang said.

Blake sighed. "Wooh. Let's all watch me get demolished again. Yayyy."

"We could, um, only watch my and Ruby's fight?" Weiss offered.

"No!" Ruby immediately countered. "We have to watch them bolth!"

"Both," Weiss said with a weird tone.

"Yeah!"

"No, it's pronounced '_both'_, Ruby."

"I… what did I say?"

"You said bolth."

"Right, bolth."

"There's no L in it!"

"Huh?"

"Say it with me. Bo…"

"... Bo…"

"Th."

"Thuh."

"Well, no 'uh' sound, but yes. Now put it together. Boooth."

"Booolth. Crap. Booo...eth."

It was so hard not to add the extra sound! What the heck?!

"No, Ruby!"

"Waaah! I didn't make a llll sound!"

"Yeah, but now you're just adding an extra syllable! It's just '_both_'. Boooth."

"Boooooth."

"Yes! Just like that."

"Bolth. Crap. Boeth. Boeth? Both? Both."

"Yes. Okay, just stop before you mess up again."

Ruby pouted. "... Yeah, that's fair."

"Send me the video?"

"Mkay."

Ruby sent the video to Weiss' scroll ID, and both Weiss' scroll and laptop pinged with the received message. Oh neat! Weiss had synced her laptop to her scroll. Yang had done that too.

Dang, Ruby really wished she had a laptop. Maybe that was something she could get with her hunt money! After getting Weiss those super pretty earrings, of course.

Weiss did some typing on her scroll and it let out the whoosh noise of sending a message.

"Sent them to Winter. Thanks."

"Mhm! Yang, Blake, c'mere!"

"Fiiine," Blake droned, as the two got up and approached Weiss' bed.

"Weiss, scooch over," Ruby ordered.

"But I'm already scooched over!"

Ruby leaned forward to look around to Weiss' other side. There was easily a foot and a half of space between Weiss and the wall. She gave Weiss a Look.

"Scooch."

"Ugh."

She scooted over.

Ruby scooted over too, so now there was enough for Yang and Bl-

Well, okay, only one of them, really. Hm.

Yang sat down next to Ruby, stretching her legs out, then held her arms out to Blake with a teasing grin.

After rolling her eyes with a hint of a smile, Blake sat on Yang's lap. Yang happily wrapped her arms around her partner and pulled her close, snuggling her nose into Blake's back and peeking at the laptop screen over Blake's shoulder.

"Try not to enjoy yourself _too_ much," Blake muttered to her.

"I'ma enjoy myself _juuust_ the right amount, thank you very much," Yang quipped back.

Blake rolled her eyes again, but her lips twitched. She looked pleased as punch about… something.

"Here," Ruby said, gesturing to Weiss and her laptop.

Weiss squinted at her.

"What?! I'm in the middle."

It made sense for her to hold the laptop. Plus, she was team captain…

With a light huff, Weiss picked up the device and placed it on Ruby's lap.

Ruby gave a happy little wiggle. Laptops were so cool! And Weiss' was fancy-skinny and sleek and cool.

The video was pulled up.

"Ready?" Ruby asked her team.

She got nods.

Woohoo!

Ruby hit the space bar.

Dang. Watching her and Ruby's fight from outside, it was crazy how much faster they seemed. Everything looked so much faster than it had from inside the fight. Tiny Ruby was a red and black blur, her scythe swings so quick they looked more like flashes of silver arcs than they did attacks. And Tiny Weiss… well, Weiss was amazing, of course. It was kinda crazy how she somehow kept her back straight pretty much the whole fight-she had crazy perfect posture! And Myrtenaster was moving just as fast as Crescent Rose, but it was so much smaller it was almost impossible to see, only becoming easily visible when it stopped moving after a strike. And watching her swish her sword and cast super awesome Dust spells out of it was so cool! She really _was_ basically a wizard. Wizardess? What was a female wizard? A witch?

Nah, Weiss wasn't a witch. That just sounded wrong.

Then…

'_Oh no.'_

They were coming up on the slappy bit.

Weiss leaned in and whispered, "I think you can skip ahead a bit."

Biting on the inside of her lips to keep from smiling, Ruby reached over to press a key when Yang growled in her ear.

"Don't you effing dare, Ruby Rose."

Ruby let out a little whine.

They got to The Part. On the screen, Tiny Ruby and Tiny Weiss looked at each other for a long moment. Ruby's cloak was off, pinned to the ground with Myrtenaster, Crescent Rose lying on the ground several feet away from them.

Then Tiny Weiss _slapped_ Tiny Ruby.

Yang let out a snorting little chortle.

"That was so rude," Ruby jokingly muttered to her partner.

"Sorry," Weiss said sheepishly.

Tiny Ruby tackled Tiny Weiss to the ground, and the two of them started slapping at each others hands.

With a groan, Weiss buried her face in her hands while Yang and Blake cackled at them. Ruby was pretty sure her cheeks were as Atomic Red as the hot wings Yang loved to eat. But even redder. And hotter.

"Look at you!" Yang huffed through her laughter. "Just… slappin'!" She playfully swatted in mockery at Blake's hands, but Blake was on her lap with her back to Yang, so it didn't really work all that well.

"Shudupwe'retrynawatch!" Ruby ordered, in a totally cool, collected, Team Captain voice.

The rest of the fight wasn't as flashy as the start. Both Ruby and Weiss were a bit slower than they had been, and Weiss didn't have Dust anymore. It was a lot more technical weapon fighting though. This time through, Ruby noticed what Professor Awesome had meant about how Weiss looked like she was using training combos.

But those training combos totally whooped Ruby's butt, so they couldn't be _that_ bad.

The video ended on a frame with Weiss standing over Ruby, rapier pointed at Ruby's dumb face.

Darn.

Like, Ruby knew she was two years behind these other students, but she got let in to Beacon early _because_ she was supposedly super duper good. Though to be fair, Weiss was one of the best. Maybe even _the_ best! Ruby kept hearing about how amazing Pyrrha was, but after both experiencing and watching Weiss be super powerful and skilled and cool, she couldn't imagine any of the other first years beating her.

Well, maybe Yang if she was mad enough.

Maybe.

"So what now?" Weiss piped up.

"Um… now we analyze stuff all super smartical-like," Ruby answered. "Then we have some crazy revelation on how to be perfect fighters and we ascend to godHOOD AND GRADUATE EARLY TO GO KILL ALL THE GRIIIIIMM!" Ruby raised a fist in the air and waved it around as her voice got louder and louder.

Everyone was quiet.

"Ruby, you're ridiculous," Yang said.

"I know."

"My ear hurts," Weiss grumped.

"Okay, whatever! Let's do some… analysisizing! Analysizing? An…"

"Analyzing?" Blake and Weiss said together.

"Yeah," Ruby said. "That too."

"So I saw what Professor Rustheart meant about Weiss doing the practice moves or whatever this time," Yang said.

Weiss sighed. "Yeah, I did too."

"Hey, me too!" Ruby chirped.

"Okay, I get it!" Weiss blurted.

"What? No, I just meant, like, it's cool that we all saw it."

Weiss glared at her.

"'Cause we're all smert," Ruby clarified.

"Uh-huh."

"I also think Weiss might want a way to reload her Dust faster," Blake offered.

Weiss tilted her head. "Maybe, though most enemies aren't as fast as Ruby. I can just reload normally against… anybody else."

Blake shrugged.

"What about me?!" Ruby chirped excitedly. She wanted tips to be a superhero!

"You should try to hook more," Yang suggested.

"Hm?"

"Yeah," Blake added. "Like, when you when you were swinging at Weiss and she blocked and stepped inside your guard, you coulda pulled backwards and hooked her."

"Ooooh, maybe if you kick on your semblance you can drag her behind you as you zoom around!" Yang said, eyes bright.

"Or you could _not_ do that," Weiss countered.

"You should totally do that," Blake confirmed.

Ruby looked over at Weiss.

"No," Weiss told her flatly.

Ruby looked away with a pout, then leaned closer to her sister and Blake.

"That's a good idea," she whispered.

When Weiss pinched her side, she let out a little yelp and jumped a bit, jostling everyone and the laptop.

"Ruby!"

"Waaah! You can't pinch me and then yell at me for reacting!"

"If you break my laptop, you're paying for the replacement."

'_Uh-oh.'_

"H-how much is it?"

Weiss' eyes went wide at that. "Oh, um… Nothing, don't worry about it. I was just… kidding."

Ruby frowned at that pause. "Really?"

"Yes," Weiss answered with a nod. "I'm just not used to saying that. It was… weird."

Ruby giggled. "Okay. So what have we got so far? Weiss should try not to follow practice maneuvers, and she doesn't want to be hooked, and she's not used to making jokes. Is that everything?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes.

"Yeah, sounds like it," Yang chuckled.

"Anything _else_?" Weiss asked haughtily.

"Okay, so Weiss," Blake started.

"Mm," Weiss grunted, clearly expecting more jokes.

"At the beginning, you know how you made that big wall of ice?"

"Sure."

"That worked really well for cutting Ruby off. I feel like you should do more of that, like, battlefield terraforming."

Weiss nodded slowly.

"Not that the attacks you did with the Dust didn't work, but the wall worked better for you to even the playing field against Ruby's super mobility."

Ruby grinned from ear to ear at that .

"And Ruby?"

"Yeah?"

"All I've got is that the professor was right. You just gotta want to _hit_ your opponent."

Ruby frowned a bit.

"And I suppose you gotta… like, Weiss kept closing in on you, so I feel like you should have taken bigger steps away to keep her at the right distance. Maybe use your semblance more in short bursts to create space?"

"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. But it's kinda hard to blip in and out of the Rose Dimension really quickly. Like, it can make me a little dizzy. And nauseous for a bit."

"Maybe something to train on?" Blake said.

"Maybe."

"She doesn't want to," Yang informed her partner.

"It just feels terrible, okay?!" Ruby yelled at nobody in particular.

"We can give you the same deal Dad did," Yang placated her. "Cookie for every blink."

… Darn, that was tempting.

"... Weiss' strawberry cookies?"

"Sure."

"Deal!"

Ruby turned her smile to her partner, who was looking at her with a confused little smirk.

"You need to be bribed with cookies to train?"

"Well, I don't _need _to be. But… training and cookies is _way_ better than training and _no_ cookies… Duh!"

It seemed pretty obvious.

Weiss frowned deeper. "I'm going to go bankrupt buying you cookies, aren't I?"

"I dunnooo, that would take a _loooot_ of cookies."

Weiss sighed and her face fell. "I totally am."

They spent a couple more minutes talking about the fight, then watched Blake and Yang's fight. There wasn't really much to say beyond what the professor had. Yang needed to chillax. Blake needed to unchillax.

Though they both seemed pretty chill sitting together right now. It was pretty cute.

So now they had some tips on how to improve, and a fight coming up on Tuesday! Against new opponents! Ruby wondered who she'd end up fighting. What if she fought Nora?! That would be sweet. Hyper super strength versus hyper super speed? That would be a sweet showdown. Or someone on Team KORL or CRDL? Ruby wasn't even sure what they did. Maybe that would make the fight even cooler!

She'd just need to sit through Dust Theory and Grimm Studies tomorrow. Ugh.

But then, super hero fights!

Woohoo!

* * *

**Sorry guys. Really trying to hit the chapter per week mark, but I've been given a lot more crap to do at work. Makes it hard. I also got sucked into the hype and played through the Witcher 3 this past week. And I started playing Smite again cuz they're releasing Team RWBY skins, so, like, hyyyyyyyyyyyyyype! **

**Hope you enjoy the chapter! Next one is fights! From Weiss' perspective this time too. : ) **


	27. Thaw 2-11

"Who do you think we're fighting today?" Yang asked, pointlessly repeating the thing she and Ruby had been pondering for the last two days.

"Again, Yang, there's no point in speculating until the professor gives us the time to come in," Weiss said slowly, hoping maybe the sisters will comprehend her this time. "Once we get that, you can go ask whoever you want to see who has the same."

"Yeah, but, like, who do you _think_ we're fighting?" Ruby asked.

Weiss groaned and hung her head.

"I bet we're fighting Team KORL," Yang said, eyeing the team where they sat a ways away in the cafeteria. "I wanna see just how strong that Leona girl is."

"So, just to be clear, you don't _think_ we're fighting Team KORL, you're just _hoping_ we do," Blake said to her partner.

"_Thank you_, Blake!" Weiss bursted.

"You two and your semantics," Yang muttered, shaking her head at her now-empty plate of bacon and hash browns.

"That's not semantics, that's just a basic understanding of _words_," Weiss griped back. "You get that there's a thirty-three percent chance that we face any of the teams right now, right? So there's no reason to think we'll fight one more than the others."

Yang squinted at her, then raised a finger and wagged it up and down at her. "You forget, Weiss, that I am The Yang. My will becomes reality."

Ruby's scroll dinged, and a second later she announced, "Oh hey, we're fighting Team JNPR!"

"Damn it," Yang grumbled.

"What was that you were saying about your will and reality?" Blake teased her with a grin.

"Shudup."

"At least you'll get to fight Nora!" Ruby chirped.

"True."

Weiss was hardly even paying attention to them. They would be fighting Team JNPR. Pyrrha. This was her chance to see how she stacked up against the best of the best.

She clasped her hands tightly together and went still with anticipation. She'd finished her breakfast of fruit and a glass of orange juice anyway.

"The Brofessor says we gotta be at the Battle Center at one," Ruby announced, reading off her scroll.

"Totally coulda slept in," Yang muttered to herself.

Weiss elected to ignore Yang's complaining. This was perfect! In a few hours she'd get to fight Pyrrha, one on one. She could see how she measured up against someone who was widely regarded as the best of their age group.

Maybe she could win! Weiss was definitely at least _one_ of the best of their age, but she hadn't had the public exposure and competition that Pyrrha had that made her so highly regarded.

Her gaze drifted down to her scroll and her mood soured.

Yesterday, she'd managed to finally find the scroll ID of the "journalist" she had to talk to, which had been surprisingly difficult considering how public the occupation tended to be, and how "open and transparent and consumer friendly" Vale Gossip claimed to be.

All that was left was to call. And talk. She hadn't done so yesterday because by the time she'd unearthed the ID, it was past six. Almost dinner time. It would just be inconsiderate to call then. And she wasn't calling now because it was early morning. The man would be eating breakfast, or maybe still be asleep. She'd call in an hour. Or maybe two. If he _was_ still sleeping, he'd need time for breakfast. And he'd probably have to drive to work. And get settled. Maybe go in and talk to the editors about what a stupid liar he was.

Weiss sighed at herself. These were just a bunch of ridiculous excuses she was coming up with because…

Well, because she just _really_ didn't want to make that call.

Honestly, she probably _shouldn't_ make the call yet anyway. It would just distract her and stress her out before her fight with Pyrrha, and that mattered _a lot_ to her.

Though getting those homosexual implications retracted mattered a lot to Father…

She'd do it. Today. Tonight. After training class, not before. Until then she shouldn't worry about it.

"... do you think, Weiss?"

"Hm? Sorry, what was that, Ruby?"

Ruby gave a happy little bounce after Weiss said her name. "I was wondering if we had a competition between my speed, Yang's strength, Blake's reflexes, and your Dust casting, who would win?"

"How… how would you get those to compete against each other?"

"It's just, like, which one do you think is further ahead compared to everyone else," Yang somewhat clarified.

"Oh… well then probably Ruby's speed," Weiss answered. Wait, how had she gotten pulled into Ruby's ridiculous hypothetical who would win?

"Really?" Ruby asked.

Weiss tilted her head. "Well, sure. My Dust casting is very good, but there are still others out there with very good Dust casting. Just like there are strong people out there to rival Yang, or people quick enough to compete with Blake. But… I don't think there's anyone out there that can beat you or even keep up with you in a race."

The blinding smile Ruby gave her told Weiss she'd given the right answer, though of course she did. She was Weiss.

Then Ruby's smile wiped away and her eyes went wide as she gasped. "What if there _is_ someone faster than me? They'd have to be, like, lightspeed or something."

"I think you're still significantly slower than lightspeed, Ruby," Blake informed her lightly.

"You'restillsignificantlyslowerthanlightspeed!" Ruby shot back in her high-pitched squeak of a yell, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Well… yes."

Yang snorted at her partner's response. "Alright, nerd babes, ya'll ready to go?"

Weiss nodded. She'd been ready to go for a while. They'd mostly been waiting for Blake, who was a pretty slow eater, and Ruby, who'd needed a bit to finish her unholy amount of cookies.

Weiss still wasn't sure why cookies were being served at breakfast.

Still stressing about the call she had to make, Weiss followed behind her teammates as they-well, mostly Ruby and Yang-jabbered, lost in her thoughts.

It was cloudy and grey out, though it still felt nice to Weiss, if a little bleak. In Atlas, even in the summer a cloudy day meant near freezing temperatures. Not that Weiss really minded the cold, but she was happy to do without it.

It was uncomfortably humid right now though. Rationally, she knew it was because they were on an island off the coast of a temperate region, but the pessimist in her felt like it was the world piling one more discomfort on her to try to make today awful.

That thought made her rethink this upcoming fight with Pyrrha. If the world was giving that to her, maybe she _shouldn't_ be excited for it. Maybe she was going to embarrass herself…

_'Stop it, Weiss. You're getting in your own head.'_

They'd all gotten back to their room when Weiss got pulled into the conversation again-by Ruby, of course.

"Why you bein' all the quiet and thoughtful, Weiss?" Ruby asked. "You gotta save some of that for Blake!"

Weiss half-rolled her eyes in response.

"You thinkin' about fighting Pyrrha?" Ruby asked.

"Yes," Weiss responded. Technically not a lie. It was one of a few things she was thinking about.

"I bet you can win," Ruby said matter-of-factly.

Great. Another person to potentially disappoint.

"I don't know, Rubes. Pyrrha is pret-ty goooood," Yang argued, grinning at Weiss.

Ruby shook her head. "Yeah, but Weiss is awesome! And she can totally beat… wait, what's Pyrrha's semblance?"

"Polarity," Weiss answered.

"Huh?"

"... Magnetism. Kind of."

"Ooooh. How do you know that?":

"She's a world renowned tournament fighter, Ruby. Her semblance is public record."

"Oh. Right. So people having to do sneaky fake fight challenge shenanigans to figure out her semblance would be a nonsensical plot point."

Weiss blinked. "Um… Sure."

"Well I totally think you can take her! Just hit her with some of those glyph-Dust magic whammies!"

"I'll… do my best."

That was a good point, though, and the one that Weiss was banking on. Had Pyrrha faced a Dust caster at Weiss' level before? If she hadn't, maybe Weiss really did have a shot at this.

"She might not even be fighting Pyrrha though," Blake cut in. "It would make the most sense to have us fight in team name order, in which case she'd be against Nora."

Weiss involuntarily gulped at that. Blake was right, that would make sense as a system. And if she was right… Well, taking hits from Nora's gargantuan hammer was not particularly at the top of Weiss' to-do list.

"Naaah, Professor Awesome is awesome! If Weiss asks to fight Pyrrha instead, I'm sure he'd say okay!" Ruby crossed her arms at the declaration and nodded, seemingly making it final.

Blake just shrugged.

Weiss went to her notebook where she'd starting writing out her strategies for fighting opponents-both Grimm and her classmates. That… debacle in the Emerald Forest when she and Ruby had almost burned everything down had shown her that she doesn't do well without a plan. She was more focused on where her foot was than what was going on with the enemies or Ruby. Granted, that had been one hundred percent Ruby's fault, but it still helped her feel vastly more comfortable and capable when she had a strategy in mind going into an encounter.

And it had worked against Ruby.

She'd filled out notes on Blake and Yang after watching their fight too.

Dealing with Blake was difficult because it was hard to know what would be effective. It boiled down to "area attacks". That and "don't get into prolonged melee duels" because she was so good at dodging-and Myrtenaster's small size meant it would be that much easier to avoid-and she was remarkably fast at throwing out a burst of attacks with her two blades. She was like Yang in that way. More specifically, Weiss had written "don't rely on parrying" because of how fast Blake was with her two blades and how adept at feinting she was with her semblance.

Yang… Weiss had written in big capital letters at the top of Yang's page the words "STAY AWAY", and it really was that simple. From the way Yang had described her semblance last week, Weiss knew she built up a energy and then let it out in a single big attack. Ideally, she could try to bait that out and dodge it, but that's what Blake had tried and it still hadn't worked, and if Blake couldn't dodge Yang, there was no way Weiss would be able to. Yang's short burst mobility was also something to be wary of, but it might also be when she was most vulnerable. When she used her shotgun blasts to launch herself, her hands were behind her and she was unable to block. She also wouldn't be able to change direction in that moment. If Weiss was going to try to get a big hit in, that would be when she should do it. The only question then would be if she could both stay away from and deal enough damage to Yang to actually close out the fight.

She also had a page for Pyrrha. She didn't have one for the rest of Team JNPR because she didn't know enough about Nora and Ren and Jaune… well, she didn't need a page for Jaune. But Pyrrha she knew. She'd watched Pyrrha's tournament performances these past couple years. Pyrrha had been a huge inspiration for her when while she was training, living proof that a girl could be a legend, earn respect and admiration. Weiss had kind of idolized her.

It was kind of crazy that Weiss was living here with her now. Pyrrha was just across the hall. And she was so… normal. Humble, quiet, even shy. Weiss wasn't really sure what she'd expected the girl's personality to be like, but it was far more subdued than the larger-than-life assumption she'd made.

As for battle strategy against her… Weiss wasn't sure what to do. Pyrrha had so few weaknesses and insanely powerful strengths. She was strongest at mid to close range. Her weapon, which had once been just a sword and a rifle but now also had a spear form, transitioned incredibly fast, and she was able to fluidly switch between forms and stances like she was breathing. At mid range, ten to fifteen feet away from her opponent, she could easily use any one of the three forms and approach the fight however she liked. She was also very fast at closing short distances, like Yang though not with the same level of damage threat once she closed in. That wasn't saying much, though, as she was an incredibly proficient duelist and even though she didn't have _Yang's_ strength, she was still very strong. Weiss also suspected she was able to use her semblance on her weapons and armor to make her swings faster so they hit harder.

On top of all of that, she was also so hard to hit. She used her shield well, dodged what she couldn't block, and her semblance meant she never got hit by any bullets and could influence most melee weapons. In last year's Mistral Regional Tournament, she'd gotten through the round robin and quarterfinals without taking a single hit. Weiss didn't suffer from the bullet issue, but she'd probably never get a hit in with Myrtenaster. She was good with her rapier, but she probably wouldn't be able to stand up to Pyrrha for any length of time.

The plus side, however small, was that Pyrrha, at least in her tournaments, didn't have experience fighting against a proficient Dust caster. They _were_ rare, and it was an incredibly expensive ability to train.

On top of that, Pyrrha had never shown any use of Dust in any of her fights. That might indicate a low capability with Dust, which would in turn mean a low resistance to it.

And Dust casting was Weiss' specialty.

"Is that your contingency plan for bringing down the Righteous League?" Ruby asked at her shoulder, making her startle.

"What? Oh, um, no. Just my notes on how to fight against… you know, opponents."

"Like me?" Ruby asked, eyes wide.

"Sure, but not just us. Grimm too." She'd written down some notes for herself, things to remember when fighting Grimm. The most obvious and important one was "don't be scared". It was embarrassing to remember the terror she'd felt when facing down an actual Grimm, an abomination of evil and darkness, for the first time. Especially when she remembered how totally fearless Ruby had been. Apparently Ruby was from a family of huntsmen and huntresses though, and she was from a small town outside the walls of Vale, so she'd likely seen her share of Grimm before that day.

"Okay, Dark Knight. Just don't let any super villains get a hold of this," Ruby joked.

Weiss didn't really get it, but Ruby was smiling so she smiled too.

"What do you have on how to fight Ruby?" she asked, leaning over Weiss' shoulder to try to see. "'Just surrender 'cause Ruby is too cool and awesome to fight'?"

Weiss grinned at that. "Not quite." She flipped back to Ruby's page and let her look it over.

"Hm… Heehee, 'beware her speed'. 'Don't let her snipe you'. 'Hits _very_ hard'. Wait, whadaya _mean _'clumsy and easy to trip up'?!" she exclaimed.

"Well… it means what it says? You seem to have a hard time keeping your balance, especially when you come out of your semblance."

Ruby gave her one of those cute, half-hearted pouts for a long moment, then looked down. "Yeaaah… It's always really disconcerting getting reintroduced to, like, gravity and friction and stuff. No matter how much I practice." She looked up at Weiss with sad, guilty eyes at that.

_'Oops.'_

"It's like… imagine being underwater, swimming, and then all of a sudden being on dry land, running," Ruby tried to explain, like she thought she was in trouble. "In an instant."

That description… Weiss could certainly see how that could be confusing.

She patted Ruby's arm. "It's not a criticism of you, Ruby. It's just something I noticed that I-and I guess other people-could try to take advantage of. So just… maybe it's something you just _can't_ improve, so don't worry about trying, just be mindful of it."

Ruby didn't seem convinced. "But… I don't _wanna_ be clumsy."

Weiss answered with a small smile and shrug. "I don't want to be weak. Not much I can do about it, just have to work around it."

"You could _totally_ do something about that," Yang piped up. "Come to the gym with me. I'll have you swole in no time!"

Weiss wrinkled her nose. "That sounds unpleasant."

"Naaah! It's tons of fun! An hour a day, three months, _guarantee_ you'll see progress. You'd have to add some protein to your diet, though. None of this 'grapefruit for breakfast' shit."

"Hey! Grapefruits are great!"

All three of her teammates all responded to that at once.

"Nuh-uh," Ruby said.

"Not really," Blake said.

"Ha! No," Yang said.

"You're all dumb," Weiss griped at them.

"You could still have your gross-fruits for breakfast though, Weiss," Ruby told her. "Then you can just cheat and drink some of Yang's gross protein shakes!"

"It's not _cheating_, Ruby," Yang sighed, giving Weiss the impression this was a conversation they'd had before. "And they're not gross."

"They're _super_ gross!" Ruby chirped back. "The vanilla doesn't taste anything like vanilla! And the chocolate tastes like poo! And they're so thick and make you feel all fat and slothy."

"Why do you know what poo tastes like?" Yang asked.

"Why do you want _me _to drink them if they're so disgusting?" Weiss asked before the conversation followed _that_ rabbit hole.

"'Cause you like gross-fruits, so you probably won't mind gross-shakes!" Ruby answered with a silly little grin.

"... Rubyyy…" Weiss began.

"I'm a dolt?" she guessed.

"Very much so, yes."

Ruby nodded, seemingly undiscouraged. "I know."

"What's she got in there on me?" Yang asked.

Weiss closed the notebook and snatched it away. "Oh no. That's a secret at least until we face each other."

Smirking, Yang shrugged. "Mkay. Not like that piece of paper will save you from these Fists of…!" She raised her hands and flexed, but then looked back and forth between them with a confused expression.

"Fury?" Ruby offered.

"See, but that makes it sound like I'm _always_ angry."

That sounded pretty close to accurate, but Ruby nodded slowly. "Hmm… Fire?"

"Fists of Fire sounds dumb, though."

"What about Firefists?"

"That sounds kinda corny."

"Ffff…Flaming Fists?"

"Eh."

Ruby hummed an 'I don't know' and shrugged, and Yang dropped her arms with a frown, her threatening boast against Weiss already forgotten with the distraction of trying to name her fists.

These sisters really were well and truly dolts.

Weiss went back to trying to figure out how to fight Pyrrha. She pulled out her case where she kept Myrtenaster and the specialized Dust canisters built for her weapon's cylinder.

Hm. She needed to replace the six she used against Ruby on Friday. She usually liked to have twelve in Myrtenaster's case.

She went to the suitcase under her bed where she was storing all of her Dust equipment and pulled out the briefcase full of pre-packed cannisters for her rapier. Yang let out a low whistle from across the room.

"Damn, Weiss. That's gotta be, what, a couple thousand dollars of Dust right there at least."

"Oh. Probably." She hadn't had to pay for the Dust, so she hadn't given it much thought. She ran some quick calculations in her head. "The Dust itself would be… about three and a half thousand. The custom cartridges are around another thousand though, I believe."

Yang let out another whistle.

After a moment, a wave of realization hit Weiss and she immediately felt guilty. Would that be considered lording her wealth over her team?

"I didn't mean to brag!" she blurted out. "I was just… trying to be… accurate?"

Yang blinked at her in surprise, then gave her a small smile. "No worries, Frosty-Pants. I didn't think you were."

"_Frosty-Pants_?" Blake asked.

"Weiss isn't wearing pants!" Ruby condemned her sister.

"Alright, _again_ with that comment," Weiss spun on her partner.

"Right, right," Ruby waved a hand at her. "'Cause she's in a skirt. Still!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and went back to what she was doing. She kept getting distracted by these two.

She brought the briefcase over to her desk and got started trying to figure out what she should bring with her for this fight. It would be prudent to carry whichever cannisters she was going to use on her until the fight so they'd get a bit more harmonized with her. She'd already done it, but it had been a while since she'd handled them. They could do with some refamiliarizing.

She opened up her laptop and pulled up the paper Winter had sent her, the one about Dust affinities by Dr. Watts. She'd skimmed through it, and found it fascinating, and she felt like something in it might help her figure out what might work well against Pyrrha, and she'd need every advantage she could get.

Dr. Watts had worked with an Atlesian psychologist to create personality profiles of various Atlesian huntsmen and students, then analyzed their affinity numbers to try to find correlations. While any one huntsman tended to have a bit of variance in how their personalities informed their affinities, when enough profiles were aggregated, patterns emerged.

What did Weiss know of Pyrrha? She was quiet, seemingly kind, humble, but also self confident. She was the best and she knew it, but she didn't flaunt it or hold it over anyone.

Self confidence, according to Dr. Watts, was usually correlated with earth Dust. That, coupled with Pyrrha's semblance, made Weiss assume that if Pyrrha _did_ have any significant amount of elemental resistance, it would be earth.

That was fine. Earth was Weiss' weakest element anyway. What did that say about her, though? She _felt_ like she was self-confident-she was even called arrogant by others.

She read more into the doctor's findings on earth Dust.

'The most widely applicable personality trait that I identified with a high earth affinity is self-confidence. This is a general self-confidence of the individual, not a specific ego when it comes to a particular skillset. When an individual has a high level of assurance in themselves, in their capability in any situation, with any skillset, with any objective, _this_ is when I found the highest earth affinity. (The overall scale to which this skews an individual's earth affinity beyond their average is slightly lower than the base for other elements, though it should be noted that the Remnant Huntsman Census of 1443 found that the average earth affinity was 14% below the average of averages of all elements combined, with a more condenced range as well, and only 7% of huntsmen sport earth as their highest affinity, with 68% of huntsmen placing earth in their fifth or sixth highest affinity. This sharp deviation from the norm has not been explained by modern science, and it is beyond the scope and interest of my present research. Perhaps it speaks to a general trait of humanity, but I digress.) The next criterium for earth affinity I found is more abstract. It is a general sense of belonging, of comfort in one's life and a feeling of being grounded. Most people are generally satisfied with how their life is, so this was hard to identify. It was actually the absence of this satisfaction leading to low earth affinities that showed me the correlation. Individuals with stressful/strained home lives, such as children of divorced parents, people that have moved around a lot, formerly homeless individuals, formerly or currently poor individuals, or even just people that didn't have a good idea of what they want from life all tended to display low earth affinities. However-and interestingly-I found that while having a low sense of belonging equated to low earth affinity, the inverse is not widely true. A high sense of belonging didn't display any non-average correlation to earth affinity, but did display a higher than average gravity affinity. This is similar to the findings mentioned earlier in this paper of high creativity leading to high air affinity, but low creativity instead correlating to low fire and molten affinities. Self-confidence does appear to have a direct correlation with Earth affinity, however, both high and low, so I have dubbed it the primary trait of Earth, with belonging/security as a secondary. I was not able to identify a tertiary trait for this element. I should note here that these two findings together showed a support that personality factors are loosely cumulative, as per Doctor Irina Preed's Cumulative Personality Affinity theory. For instance, there was one individual in the study who grew up on the streets of Mantle. This alone would lead me to believe they would have a low earth affinity. However, their rough upbringing instilled in them a strong self-confidence in their ability to handle anything the world threw at them. This alone would lead me to believe they would have a high earth affinity. What I found, which supports the CPA theory, is that the individual had an average earth affinity (only 2% off of his overall average). Of the 126 individuals I studied, 43 of them I was able to get a psych profile with which I was confident I could analyze these two traits of self-confidence and belonging, and of them, 35 showed support for the CPA theory. The other 8 also had significant semblances or personal experiences that I feel were responsible for this deviation from the norm. It could also have been an unidentified tertiary personality trait.'

Weiss pulled away from the paper to let that all sink in. What did that mean for her? Her earth affinity was _well_ below average, which she guess would suggest that she lacked both confidence _and_ a feeling of belonging. The latter… the latter she could see. She didn't like to admit it, but her home life was… well, Yang had referred to it as "what the fuck?", and it struck Weiss as a simple-but-accurate characterization.

But she was fairly sure she was confident… Sure, there were some things she knew she was worthless and terrible at, like painting or making friends or bench pressing, but she was pretty sure she was _capable_ of doing anything if she put her mind to it, as long as it wasn't one one of those things. Mostly.

Well…

She liked to think "Of course I can do that, I'm a Schnee." Her father had raised her to believe they were talented and smart enough to do anything, even while beating or berating her for failure. That was _why_ he was so unforgiving with failure.

But did Weiss really _believe _she could do anything?

The answer felt like it was creeping very close to "not really", and Weiss didn't like that at all. She jerked away from this line of thinking.

She should just be focusing on Pyrrha.

Okay, so earth resistance-likely but not important, as Weiss didn't want to use earth Dust anyway. Maybe Weiss should like at this differently, start with what she was good at and see if Pyrrha might be resistant to it.

Or she could go across the hall and persuade Jaune to tell her Pyrrha's affinity numbers… She had no doubt it would succeed because Jaune was absolutely smitten with her despite knowing next to nothing about her, but… it felt like that would be cheating.

Besides, trying to puzzle it out was an intellectually stimulating exercise. 'Fun', Ruby would call it.

So, ice. Ice was Weiss' highest affinity, what she liked most and was most experienced at using. She scrolled a few pages down. What did Dr. Watts have to say about ice?

'_Note: My findings on ice were of great interest and import to me on a professional and personal level. Ice is my own greatest affinity, and I was curious what that says about me. I strove to remain unbiased, however, and indeed consulted both Doctors Preed and Heron twice with my final summation to ensure an accurate and uncolored report._ _Ice is an element, like fire, that has a heavy public perception attached to it. People, both civilian and huntsman alike, tend to view a high ice affinity as indicative of an antisocial tendency. However, I found that to not necessarily be the case here, but rather a somewhat common byproduct of the actual personality traits that link to ice affinity. _ The most widely applicable personality trait that I identified with a high ice affinity is introspection. Highly self-reflective individuals tend to have higher ice affinities. This was disconnected from self-awareness, though, particularly social self-awareness, an interconnection that I have found is falsely assumed by many, an observation supported by Doctor Heron, who as a psychologist studies such things. The relevance for ice affinity here is solely on the first trait, introspection. (The degree of impact for this trait, as best as it can be measured, on the individual's ice affinity in comparison to their average is actually quite high, the highest along with fire. The Remnant Huntsman Census of 1433 did find that ice affinities average about 6% lower than the average of averages of all elements, though from the spread of the individual data it can be extrapolated that this is likely due to an overall lesser amount of people with the corresponding personality traits for ice than it is a human-wide lower affinity, as we see with earth. Indeed, while 14% of huntsmen show ice as their highest affinity, 36% show it as their lowest, and this disparity greatly impacts the average. I highly recommend Doctor Preed's 'Analysis of the Huntsmen Affinity Census' for more expounded theories on these numbers.) The next most prevalent personality trait I found for ice is a desire for order. This, as most of these secondary traits seem to be, is more abstract. I found the correlation most in individuals that prefer to live with and adhere to a schedule in their daily lives. Since battle is the common trade of all huntsmen, I was easily able to determine that it also correlated with a tendency to desire a plan of action, pre-set battle strategies, and a lower capability or, sometimes, refusal to improvise. As with other secondary traits, while a high desire for order means a higher ice affinity, the inverse is not always true. A low desire for order/a tendency to improvise seemed to not lead to a low ice affinity, but equates more directly to higher fire and air affinities. I found a tertiary trait for ice as well, though I found it to be so heavily prevalent compared to other tertiary traits that it might be more accurate to dub it a second secondary trait. That trait is a general distrust in others. Individuals that were distrusting of others, especially strangers or anyone outside of their social circles, tended to have higher ice affinities. Again, the inverse is not necessarily true, and trusting individuals tended to display higher gravity and water affinities rather than lower ice affinities. It should be noted here that once again these findings support the CPA theory. Of the 126 individuals I…'

Weiss pulled away from the paragraph. That was a lot to think about. So the primary trait of ice-inclined huntsmen was introspection. That… lined up pretty well with Weiss. She'd just had to actively stop herself from analyzing herself too much. The bit about order and planning fit too. Here she was reading a comprehensive psychiatric analysis of Dust affinity to try to prep for a practice fight with a classmate. And the bit about distrust...

She hit all the checkboxes here.

But did Pyrrha?

Was Pyrrha introspective? That was… kind of hard to tell from the outside. Weiss honestly had no idea.

As for order… Weiss hadn't picked up on any deep-seated desire for a schedule or regimen from her. She'd been pretty laid back when her team and Yang had discussed going to the windball game the other day, happy to let other people do the planning. Weiss wasn't sure how much planning Pyrrha did before her tournament fights, so she couldn't really use that as a datapoint. The way she portrayed herself, though, she was just so talented that it never mattered who she was facing, and she was able to just do her own thing and win.

However, this was a secondary trait, and Dr. Watts stressed that a _low_ tendency to want order didn't necessarily mean Pyrrha would have a low affinity. It would be based more on the accumulation of the relevant traits.

Pyrrha didn't strike Weiss as distrusting. In fact, she seemed fairly sociable _despite_ her shyness.

What really mattered here was whether or not Pyrrha was introspective, but there was no way for Weiss to know. Based on how little she matched with the other two traits, though, Weiss figured her ice affinity would be low to average at best.

Ice it was, then. She checked what she had loaded in Myrtenaster. Three ice, two air, and a water. She swapped the water out for another ice, as she figured her higher skill with ice invalidated the need for the water. She'd brought one against Ruby mostly because she'd been expecting to need to make a wide-sweeping wave to try to catch Ruby in a big area of effect, but Pyrrha couldn't cover the same distances Ruby could. She then slotted three more ice cannisters on her belt, two air for some extra potential mobility and knockback, and, after a moment, a gravity. It served the same general purpose as her glyphs but to a much greater degree, and it comboed devastatingly with them. It might come down to her just needing to bog down Pyrrha enough that she was too slow to avoid Weiss' strikes.

It was a long shot, and Pyrrha might be able to use her semblance to push herself away from a gravity effect, but Weiss felt she had her other bases cov-

"Hey, Weiss?" Ruby's voice cut through her thoughts.

Weiss' head jerked back in surprise at the voice, and only then did she realize that Ruby was sitting next to her, at her own desk.

"Yes, Ruby?"

"Can you help me with this Dust equation?"

Weiss blinked in surprise, then looked down at what Ruby was doing.

Was she…?

"Are you working on _homework_?"

Ruby gave her a goofy, happy look. "Well, yeah! You were sitting here looking all reading-y and smart, so I figured… ya know, I would too."

Weiss wasn't really sure how to interpret the happy little flip her heart did at that, but she smiled widely. "Sure, I'd love to help." She looked around. "Where are Yang and Blake?"

Ruby let out a little giggle. "Man, you're, like, super tunnel visioned, aren't you?"

"Tunnel what?"

"Tunnel visioned! Like, you only focus on one thing at a time, and give it one hundred percent of your attention."

"Oh… I suppose, yes."

Ruby nodded as if filing that information away for later. "Blake wanted to go read under their tree and Yang went with her 'cause she's a lemming."

"Ah." It was hard not to grin at that. "Okay, what did you need help with?"

"The calculations for raw-to-refined Dust crap that we learned yesterday! I'm using the formulas Professor Goodwitch gave us, but I'm not getting the answers that are in the book and I don't know why!"

Weiss pulled out her own notebook to work the equations, a big smile on her face that she didn't quite understand.

* * *

"Okay, Ruby, Jaune, would you like to start us off?" Professor Rustheart asked.

"Sure!" Ruby cheered.

Jaune seemed far more subdued.

Ruby turned to her team with a big, expectant smile.

"Go get 'im, Rubes," Yang said, giving her little sister a fist bump.

Weiss reached up to smooth out a wrinkle in Ruby's cloak at her shoulder. "You'd _better_ win, Ruby. My partner _cannot_ lose to a boy that wears _sweaters_." She ended with a small smile and a pat on Ruby's arm.

The small bit of humor earned her a huge smile and adorable giggle from her partner. "Are sweaters a nono?" Ruby asked.

Weiss looked over at Jaune. He was wearing different clothes under his armor from the set he'd worn in the Emerald Forest-well, the top was different. Weiss suspected the jeans were the same. But instead of the black hoodie he was wearing an atrocious sweater with a plaid pattern in fuschia and purple and dark blue colors.

"_That_ one certainly is," she answered.

Ruby let out another laugh while Yang sighed deeply, looking at Jaune herself.

"Yeaaaah…"

"Focus," Blake told Ruby, and probably was directing it to Weiss and Yang as well. "You're about to fight. Get in the right headspace."

"It's just _Jaune_," Ruby pseudo-whined.

Blake pursed her lips and looked over at the boy, who was walking out to the battle area and struggling to deploy his kite shield.

"... True."

"Go on, Rubes," Yang said. "Put him out of his misery quick so I can smash Nora."

"So you can _what_ her?" Blake asked with a teasing grin.

"Oh shut up, you know what I mean."

Ruby skipped out to stand across from her opponent. They were still in the battle center, but in a different section now. Instead of the open, flat field of the gun range, they were in a large room that housed two stone structures that appeared to be castle ruins. Beacon was built over the ruins of the old castle of the original kingdom of Vale, so Weiss assumed these were repurposed remnants of that.

One of the structures was short and wide, rectangular, its ceiling partially collapsed on one side and some of its walls missing. Scorch marks and weapon scoring gave Weiss the impression this had been used as a battleground for training huntsman for quite some time.

The second structure was taller, two stories-though one of the walls went up high enough that Weiss suspected it had once been three stories and the roof and top floor had collapsed. It was shaped like an L, with the shorter edge being the taller side, and a staircase along the outer wall leading up to it, cracked and split about midway through. The break was wide enough that a normal person (and maybe Jaune) would have trouble clearing it, but it likely wouldn't bother anyone else here beyond being something to be careful not to fall into.

"Alright lady, gent, sync me your myAuras please," the professor requested.

The spectating team members all moved toward him so they could watch the aura bars. Weiss was incredibly mindful of Pyrrha, her relaxed, casual posture. She didn't seem at all stressed about their upcoming fight.

Weiss had asked that they fight each other, as Blake had been right about the professor planning for them to pair against each other in team name order, and Pyrrha had been surprised and happy to oblige. And Nora and Yang were both ecstatic to be facing each other.

Weiss did her best to also look relaxed. It was hard, though. The muscles in her shoulders kept knotting up, tension from anticipation making itself physically known.

"Gooooo Ruby!" Yang cheered.

Ruby shot her a smile and a thumbs up.

The professor cleared his throat. "Alright! Get ready… Get set… Fight!"

Ruby skot a gravity round blast out of her scythe to launch herself forward, flying at Jaune, starting the fight off fast.

Jaune braced for the impact, squatting a bit and raising his shield. His feet were too close together, though. He wouldn't be able to keep-

Ruby's scythe crashed into Jaune's shield and he stumbled back, managing to keep his feet but losing all sense of a fighting stance. Ruby seemed to expect him to recover more quickly than he did, though, because her next attack was a sweeping arc that went over his head. She kind of stopped and blinked at the blade of her weapon, then turned back to Jaune.

Jaune didn't seem to register how close he came to getting smacked in the face. His head had been down for the attack and when he got his feet under him he slashed out blindly towards Ruby, who hopped back.

He transitioned the swing into a shield charge, which might have been a good move but for the fact that he tucked his head down while he did it. Ruby blurred into her Rose Form and side stepped him, rematerializing behind him and to his left, and he lost track of her.

She hit him with a big uppercut that knocked him up into the air and took out… hmm. It only took out five percent of his aura. He must have a lot.

Ruby twirled Crescent Rose around and hit Jaune with another uppercut, knocking him higher, then planted her weapon in the ground and gravity blasted up, delivering a two-footed kick to Jaune's back and sending him flying onto the roof of the rectangular building.

He hit the roof hard, landing on his face and half rolling around before he was able to stop himself with his shield. Now face up, he was able to see the storm of petals that was Ruby arcing up into the sky and veering down to land on him. He rolled to his left and tried to to push himself onto his feet with his shield arm in the same motion, but the movement was clunky and he stumbled.

It at least was enough to get him away from Ruby's rose-speed overhead slam that bit down into the stone roof where he had just been.

The time it took Jaune to reorient before he slashed meant Ruby was able to pull her blade out of the stone and block. She had no means of blocking Jaune's followup, though, and wasn't prepared to dodge, so when he bashed her with his shield she got knocked over.

That hit did six percent of Ruby's aura. Jaune was strong.

Ruby kept hold of her weapon as she fell to the ground. When Jaune rushed up to try to guillotine her head, she shot another gravity round in the opposite direction and she was sent sliding into him.

With a yelp, Jaune tripped over her and fell on his face, but Ruby kept sliding from the moment of the blast. She kicked up just as she reached the edge of the roof and slammed Crescent Rose into the stone. She was left hanging from her scythe, dangling several feet above the ground.

Next to Weiss, Yang let out a laugh.

Ruby looked down at the ground, then up at the approaching Jaune, then down at the ground again. She let go of her scythe.

She dropped down, out of Weiss' sight. Jaune rushed to the edge of the roof where Crescent Rose was still stuck and looked down, turning his head as if following some-

Ruby came around the corner in her Rose Form, the fly up and back onto the roof behind Jaune, who was still looking down, probably at the trail of petals she'd left behind. He must not have realized just how fast Ruby could move around.

It cost her a bit of aura, but the maneuver worked.

She came out of her Rose Form just as she crashed into Jaune's back, and he fell over the side of the building with a cry. A couple points dropped off his aura that Weiss assumed was him hitting the ground.

Ruby pumped her fist and Weiss was fairly certain she heard a "Yes!" from her, and Yang also let out a proud "Nice!" at the hit. Ruby grabbed her scythe, holding it upside down, and hopped down out of sight once more.

The sounds of weapons clashing rang out once, twice, then Jaune's aura dropped three points and another four points in quick succession. Then Ruby's ticked down two, and more metal-on-metal noises rang out.

A moment later, Jaune came back into view, being driven back by a whirlwind named Ruby. Her attacks had a rhythm to them, the swings lightning fast, then a delay where she had to slow down to stop the heavy weapon and swing again. Even with the lulls, it was still a _very_ fast sequence of attacks, and unlike her sister, she was putting in a constant, sustained onslaught instead of quick patterns of three to five attacks and then breaking.

It meant that Jaune was constantly backpedaling. He needed to get offensive, break up Ruby's rhythm because she wasn't going to stop like this. He could use the fact that he had a sword and a shield to leverage himself inside her reach.

"He needs to step up," Pyrrha muttered to nobody in particular. "Get inside her reach."

A rush of pride filled Weiss that she had the same thought as Pyrrha Nikos.

Jaune took two more heavy hits before he found a way back into the fight, mostly because Ruby seemingly messed up and clipped the tip of her scythe's blade into the ground, making it skip and interrupting her flow. He bashed her with his shield, forcing her to step back, then went for a stab. It was slow and awkward-he pumped his arm all the way back before lunging forward, telegraphing the attack for a blind opponent to see, and Ruby easily dodged to the side.

They traded back and forth, though the trades were _heavily_ in Ruby's favor. For every hit Jaune got in, Ruby got in four, and Crescent Rose hit _much_ harder than Jaune could.

The end of the fight came suddenly. Ruby and Jaune were dueling back and forth when Jaune shoved Ruby back and went for a sweeping blow to her ankles. Weiss was worried Ruby wouldn't react in time, being off balance as she was, but she blurred into petals and dashed straight up into the air just in time. She returned to physical form with a downward slice that hit the kneeling Jaune right in the back of the neck.

Apparently there was a _lot_ of strength behind the attack, because it forced Jaune into his ground and hit hard enough that his aura flickered.

"Time!" Professor Rustheart yelled as soon as that happened. Glancing at the aura bars, Weiss saw that Jaune was still at 41%. They were supposed to be fighting to 30%, but Weiss understood why the professor would want to stop the fight as soon as there was a flicker. They _definitely_ didn't want Jaune to get hit while his aura was down because that was incredibly dangerous, and once someone flickered they were more susceptible to doing so again until they rested and let their aura… reset itself, or whatever it did. Even still today, nobody was really sure about the hows and whys of aura.

Ruby froze mid swing at the professor's shout, and Weiss huffed a sigh of relief. She hadn't noticed Jaune's aura flicker out-it had been a subdued flash of goldish light that had been pretty easy to notice, but it's likely Ruby had been focused on her weapon instead of Jaune. If that attack had gone through before Jaune's aura came back up…

Ruby helped Jaune to his feet as his aura swept back over him. They exchanged some words, Ruby looking really excited and happy while Jaune seemed a bit dejected. She was apparently trying to cheer him up a bit, though. She _was_ Ruby after all.

They walked over together and once they got near the rest of the group, Ruby buzzed right into Yang with a big hug.

"Yang, did you see that?!"

They jabbered excitedly to each other-particularly about the 'gravity blast into tripping Jaune into hanging off the building' maneuver-while Jaune trudged over to his own team.

He went to Pyrrha, and Weiss tuned out her teammates to listen to what Pyrrha said-not in a creepy way! She was just curious what kind of advice Pyrrha would give.

"You did well!" Pyrrha told him.

"Yeah, those were some nice moves!" Nora added.

"Definitely a very big improvement from last week," Ren said.

"Yeah, sure," Jaune muttered, clearly unconvinced.

"It's true!" Pyrrha reassured. "Would you like some pointers?"

"Ma-"

"Hey, Professor!" Ruby chirped, stopping both conversations.

"Hm?"

"How'd you stop me like that? Jaune said his aura flickered when I hit him there and you yelled 'Time!' and my scythe just _stopped_!"

"Um… I just yelled," he answered.

"That was me," Pyrrha spoke up. "I wasn't sure if you'd be able to stop in time, so I…" she waved a hand, "... helped."

"Neat," Ruby smiled. "Totally woulda stopped in time though!"

"I'm sure you would have. I was just being careful." Pyrrha smiled at Jaune then, but he responded by sulking at the ground even harder, and Pyrrha's eyebrows knit together in concern.

"Well good thinking, Pyrrha," the professor said. "Would you and Weiss like to go next?"

"I'd be happy too! Weiss?" Pyrrha turned her smile to Weiss.

It took a surprising amount of effort to swallow past her nerves, but Weiss managed it. "Absolutely."

Weiss took a deep breath to steel herself and a pair of thin arms wrapped around her from behind.

"You got this, Weiss!" Ruby cooed quietly, then quickly hopped away from her.

Weiss gave her partner a grateful smile for the vote of confidence, then marched out to stand across from her opponent.

Pyrrha Nikos.

Weiss rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen up a bit.

"Gooooo Weiss!" Yang cheered, but then she heard Ruby shush her sister.

"_She doesn't like that, remember?_" Ruby whispered.

Weiss was puzzled for a moment, wondering where Ruby got that impression, when she remembered Professor Port's class last week. A guilty pang hit her again for her behaviour that day. She _did_ actually appreciate that her teammates were rooting for her. It was a new feeling, for the most part, but she found that she liked it.

"Alright, ladies. Sync up," the professor called to them.

_'Right. Focus, Weiss,'_ she chastised herself as she synced her myAura._ 'You need to be at one hundred percent for this.'_

Across from her, Pyrrha seemed entirely at ease. She didn't think this would be _easy_, would it? No, Weiss had spent all morning analyzing how humble Pyrrha was, she wouldn't be displaying arrogance now. She was probably just used to this by now.

_'Focus.'_

"Get ready…"

_'Head up, shoulders back, left foot forward...'_

Pyrrha held her hands out to either side and the sword and shield on her back snapped to her hands. Weiss knew it was her semblance, but it was still a bit intimidating.

"Get set…"

_'Slow your breathing...'_

Pyrrha crouched down, bringing her shield up and switching her weapon to spear form.

"Fight!"

From watching Pyrrha's tournament fights, Weiss knew how this would start.

As she expected, Pyrrha didn't advance, but rather started moving in a slow circle around Weiss, shield raised and spear pointing at her, propped up by the divot in the shield.

Weiss matched the circle for now, but she'd need to break this because sticking to what Pyrrha was comfortable with was not the way to approach this.

She cycled through Myrtenaster's cylinder until she got to the ice cannister that was followed by a wind one.

Pyrrha was watching her, eyes locking on to her hands, feet, and eyes. No kind smile now, all intensity and focus. It gave Weiss the unsettling feeling that no matter what she did, Pyrrha would see it coming.

_'Enough.'_

Weiss poured aura into her weapon. Some flowed along the blade, enveloping and empowering it, but some followed the thread of silver that ran to the selected cannister, triggering the ice Dust. It activated, rushing out of the cannister and cylinder and down Myrtenaster's blade, and Weiss swished the weapon, _willing_ the Dust to arc out.

The result was a wide, sweeping arc of frost that filled the air and covered the ground as it rocketed forward toward Pyrrha.

Pyrrha charged forward, shield up, jumping up and tucking her legs to her chest when the ice hit her to decrease the surface area it made contact with. She crashed through with an explosion of white and landed on her feet, running straight at Weiss and covering the distance with three long strides.

_'... Crap.'_

Weiss instinctively parried the two spear thrusts that came at her, but when Pyrrha used her shield as a weapon, using a punching motion to slam her with the edge, Weiss knew she couldn't block that, but didn't make a decision on what to do instead fast enough. The shield's edge smashed into her, the right side of her chest, and she got knocked back and onto her ass. The drain on her aura from the hit was noticeable, but not _too_ much.

Pyrrha didn't let up. With Weiss on the ground, she leapt forward, flipping her spear around and driving it down towards Weiss' chest.

Weiss rolled to the side, triggering Myrtenaster's cylinder to cycle to an ice cannister as she did so, not really caring which one in the sequence it was. As soon as she was able, she stabbed into the ground and willed a wall of ice to appear and separate her from her opponent. It was conjured just in time to intercept a backhanded shield slam.

Weiss saw an opportunity to turn the tempo to her favor. Her aura was still humming through the wall of ice, and she thrust her free hand forward.

The ice obeyed her will, shattering outwards, dozens of foot-long blades of cold glass cutting across Pyrrha. She staggered back, ducking behind her shield. Her weapon transitioned into its rifle form as she did so, and as she knelt behind her shield for protection, she rested her weapon's barrel in its divot and fired blind shots towards Weiss.

Weiss wasn't ready to be attacked at the moment, as she was still in the mindset that _she_ was the attacker right now, so two bullets hit her in the stomach and arm before she reacted, throwing herself to the side.

The rain of ice daggers now gone, Pyrrha straightened up and took not even a moment to relocate Weiss and move forward, switching to her sword as she did so. Only a few feet of space separated them, and Weiss wasn't in a position to do anything if Pyrrha got on her.

She flicked her sword out to create another wall of ice, pouring more aura than necessary into it in her panic, but…

_'Woops.'_

She was on an air cannister.

Instead of a wall of ice, a huge burst of wind was summoned at the tip of Myrtenaster that sent Pyrrha flying back.

_'I suppose that works.'_

Pyrrha flipped herself over midair so she was facing the ground. She drove the point into the dirt to slow herself, and her feet touched down they did so with such force that ruts were created where she passed.

On the one hand, that was impressive and was probably a use of her semblance that displayed incredibly fine control, but on the other hand, Weiss' windblast had been _really_ fucking strong.

Of course, she paid for it with another noticeable depletion of her aura.

Pyrrha ran at her again, firing her rifle as she moved, and Weiss summoned a glyph in front of her to block the shots while she ducked through the doorway of the L-shaped building, breaking Pyrrha's line of sight. She jogged back a bit, pulling around the corner and up the ruined staircase a bit, and waited. When Pyrrha came through the doorway, Weiss could crush her against the wall with ice.

A faint humming rang through the air, and Weiss wasn't able to puzzle it out before Pyrrha's shield came flying through the doorway, curved a turn and rocketed straight at her. She barely managed to react quickly enough to summon another glyph in front of her, the shield bouncing off, then flying straight up.

Weiss followed the object's trail. It sailed up and over the top of the wall Weiss was standing next to, and less than a second later Pyrrha appeared floating over that wall, shield now in hand.

_'She can FLY?!'_

It clicked a moment later-she could move the metal of her weapons and armor.

This was ridiculous.

Pyrrha fell towards Weiss, though she through her spear before she landed. Weiss pushed herself to the side with a glyph, the spear impaling the stone where she'd been with an audible _crack!_

Pyrrha landed at her spear in a kneeling position, then pulled it out of the ground and threw her shield at Weiss again in one motion. This time Weiss was ready for it, deflecting it with a wave of her hand and an accompanying glyph.

She jumped back and created a glyph under her feet, then backpedaled, creating a staircase of glyphs behind her to get some elevation. Pyrrha could fly, apparently, which meant she could pursue Weiss up here, but maybe it would cost her more aura to do so than it did for Weiss to summon these grey glyphs that were only big enough for her to stand on; they were basically free.

Pyrrha shot at her from the staircase and Weiss summoned a glyph in front of her. Checking to make sure she was on an ice cannister, she willed her aura down Myrtenaster again, then as the Dust reacted she _forced_ it to manifest through her glyph instead of down her blade. She sent a huge ray of frost down at Pyrrha, easily six feet in diameter.

Pyrrha apparently hadn't been expecting an attack through the glyph, because her eyes went wide and she dove sideways just a hair too late. The frost clipped her ankle and foot and the impact made her spin, her heel slamming into the wall as she fell.

She landed by bracing with her shield on the ground, though, flowing seamlessly into a roll and spinning to shoot two more rounds at so fast there was no _way_ she wasn't dizzy, and Weiss honestly wasn't sure how she was able to turn, spot Weiss, aim, _and_ fire so quickly and fluidly.

Fortunately, the shots just bounced off the bottom of the glyph Weiss was standing on because Pyrrha didn't have a good shot from where she now stood almost directly below the platform.

Stepping further back and up another series of glyphs, Weiss clicked open Myrtenaster's cylinder and pulled out the empty cartridges, reloading them with another two ice, a wind, and the gravity cannister that was a long shot, putting the empty cannisters in the slots on her belt where the replacements had been.

Below her, Pyrrha was waiting, looking both at her opponent and around herself.

Recalculating.

Reloaded, Weiss sent a volley of ice missiles down at Pyrrha, but the girl dodged by darting-literally darting-away, moving almost twenty feet with a single motion. She went out the doorway Weiss had walked through, then sprinted around the wall of the other building, out of Weiss' sight.

_'Crap.'_

She was going into the building that still had a roof-at least most of one. Somewhere that Weiss would have to abandon her height advantage to follow.

It was too risky to do that, though.

Could she flush Pyrrha out? Maybe. She could bury the building in ice. Or maybe… maybe she could just tear down the building?

She summoned a black glyph parallel to the wall of the rectangular building that was closest to her, growing and growing it until it was at least fifteen feet in diameter. Then she clicked over to the gravity cannister and projected its power into her glyph.

The result was a devastatingly powerful gravity well. Its effect pulled loose stones from the ruins immediately, then bits and pieces of the wall started to pull apart, flying into the glyph and shattering against it.

The glyph itself glowed with purple lines threading through it, an entrancing effect of reverse spinning and constantly shifting lines running across the surface.

Three seconds passed. Five. Ten.

The ruins were coming apart, brick by grey brick. The roof collapsed in on itself, first slowly along the edge along the wall, then all at once the center caved in as it lost its connecting support.

In an attempt to escape, Pyrrha flew up from where she'd bunkered down against the wall, but she got caught in the well's pull regardless. She flew against it but it was slowly pulling her in.

As impressive as this was, Weiss wouldn't be able to keep it up forever. The effect of the Dust was going to run out s-

Pyrrha tossed her shield in a wild throw off to the side, and Weiss tensed, watching it. It was going away from her, but… turning, arcing around.

Now it was heading right at her.

How did Pyrrha always know exactly where she was without having to look at her?!

She glanced at Pyrrha one more time to make sure she was still practically immobilized by the gravity well, then prepared to block the shield like she had before. Honestly, why did Pyrrha keep trying th-

Two gunshots cracked out, and Weiss felt her face get slammed with a microcosmic force, in the nose and cheek. It didn't hurt her through her aura, but the impact was still there and she lost her balance as she fell back, plummeting from her perch. In her daze, she let go of the glyph and Dust casting she'd been using to lock down Pyrrha.

Before she hit the ground, she threw her free hand up and summoned a black glyph at the tips of her fingers, arresting her fall as she swung unceremoniously from the momentum. Now a safe few feet from the ground, she dismissed the glyph to allow herself to fall again so she could get her bearings again.

Just as the balls of her feet hit the dirt, Pyrrha's shield, apparently still on its homing path for Weiss, slammed into her side and sent her sprawling.

Her first thought was, '_Ow.'_

Her second thought was that now her outfit was dirty beyond belief. It would probably need to be drycleaned for eternity after this.

Then the hum that she'd come to recognize as part of Pyrrha's semblance rang out, and she looked up to see Pyrrha sprinting at her, shield returning to her hand as she did.

Weiss pushed herself to her feet with a white glyph under her free hand and got her feet under her just in time to parry the lunge Pyrrha sent at her chest. She made sure to deflect the spear to the inside of Pyrrha's body and side step in the other direction so she couldn't get shield bashed.

From Pyrrha's side, Weiss slashed down at the back of her knee, but Pyrrha twisted, lifting her leg to deflect the attack off her greaves. At the same time, she swapped to her sword, then slashed at Weiss' head.

Weiss ducked the attack and stepped back to narrowly dodge another shield punch, then blocked the downward cleave that followed it up. She clicked over to a wind Dust cannister, and when Pyrrha started up a sideways slash at her, she elected to attack instead of defend, thrusting at Pyrrha's chest and releasing another blast of wind.

Pyrrha must have pulled some semblance shenanigans, though, because at the last moment Weiss felt her rapier jerk to the side, skidding off of Pyrrha's breastplate. The wind consequently launched Pyrrha sideways instead of back, but at least it still launched her. She probably took a lot less damage than she would have if that stab had connected correctly, though.

She hadn't put as much into this blast, so it only sent Pyrrha sliding about ten feet and didn't even really unbalance her. It gave Weiss space, though, and she followed up with a fanning spray of icicles.

Pyrrha blocked with her shield, but the ice shards hit with such force that she had to take two steps back.

Weiss summoned a series of glyphs around and above Pyrrha as she stumbled, once again pushing ice Dust through her semblance to send ice lances at her opponent from every direction.

Pyrrha ducked, raising her shield, dodging two and blocking one, but three more connected with her hip, shoulder, and back. She let out a grunt and dropped to all fours. If Weiss was counting correctly-which of course she was-that was her last loaded ice cannister, but...

Was Weiss _winning?_ It felt like she was winning!

Excited, she rushed up to stab at Pyrrha's bowed head, but just before she hit, Pyrrha jerked her head to the side.

_'FUCKING HOW?!'_

How did she always know where Weiss was without looking?!

Pyrrha launched herself up at Weiss, slamming the top of her head into the bottom of Weiss' chin.

_'Ow,'_ Weiss thought again as she rocked back.

Pyrrha then slashed at her once, twice, and Weiss wasn't recovered enough to block. She took the hits, then flailed wildly with another windblast.

She made a mistake getting close. She should have reloaded.

Pyrrha caught her swipe in the divot of her shield and the tunnel of wind it created blew off to the side, doing nothing.

And now there was no Dust left in Myrtenaster, and only a single ice and a single wind cartridge on her belt.

When Pyrrha swung at her neck, Weiss didn't have Myrtenaster available to block, so she did the instinctive thing, raising her hand to catch the blow.

It worked, though she felt the blade bite into her aura.

They both glanced down at Weiss' hand in surprise, and after a moment an idea struck Weiss. She let of the blade to create a smidge of space between it and her hand, then quickly summoned a small, concentrated white glyph on her palm.

The blade jerked out of Pyrrha's hand and spun away, bouncing across the dirt.

Weiss immediately continued with a series of strikes against her unarmed opponent, slash, stab, slash, stab stab.

Of course, Pyrrha caught each strike on her shield.

_'Shields are stupid,'_ Weiss decided.

Pyrrha jerked her empty hand out toward Weiss, and it was easy to guess what that meant. Weiss pushed herself to the side with a glyph just as Pyrrha's sword came spinning back to her hand.

Moving her hands as fast as she could, she loaded her last two Dust cannisters into Myrtenaster, not bothering to put the empty cartridges on her belt, just tossing them aside.

It made her brain itch to do that, but she didn't have time.

Pyrrha turned to follow, but Weiss lashed out with a quick blast of ice that encased Pyrrha's feet up to her knees. She then darted forward and tried to get in some quick hits while Pyrrha was locked down, but Pyrrha was able to block or parry all of the attacks.

Pyrrha's weapon switched to rifle form as she blocked one of Weiss' stabs with her shield, and Weiss immediately swiped, deflecting bullet that came at her with her rapier, then danced back, summoning a large glyph in front of her to shield her from more shots.

It was kind of ridiculous that Pyrrha was half frozen in ice and _Weiss _was the one getting forced back.

With one strong downward slam with her shield, Pyrrha shattered the ice encasing her.

Weiss backed away.

Just one air blast left, and Pyrrha didn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. And Weiss had failed to actually connect a blow with Myrtenaster this entire fight. She'd been expecting that, to some extent, but still… it felt kind of shitty.

Pyrrha bounded forward and reengaged the melee duel that had been interrupted. Weiss made a point to make every step back she took long so that Pyrrha's shield couldn't be used as a weapon, forcing her opponent to only be able to reach her with the edge of her sword.

It was… manageable. Weiss was successfully able to parry Pyrrha's attacks, but she was starting to get fatigued. Her thighs were burning, as was her left arm from all this battering back and forth she had to take with Mrytenaster. Milo didn't hit as hard as Crescent Rose, but Pyrrha was definitely stronger than Ruby, so it was pretty much the same amount of physical punishment to trade blows with them.

Weiss conjured another burst of wind to separate them and give herself a breather.

The blast knocked Pyrrha back ten feet, and when she straightened up she didn't immediately attack again, apparently fine with having a break, though she clearly didn't need it.

"You fight well," she called out, switching to her spear and stabbing it into the ground next to her.

It was praise, but it was praise that hurt. Pyrrha was only willing to stop and talk because she knew she was going to win. _And_ she'd probably say the same to anybody. She'd just said it to _Jaune_.

Weiss could give nothing but a quick, insincere smile in response.

"This is the hardest fight I've had in years," she added.

"Which one was harder?" Weiss asked.

Pyrrha shrugged. "Just fights with my first trainer when I was young and inexperienced. Your definitely the most formidable opponent I've faced that wasn't twenty years older than me."

That made Weiss actually smile. That, coming from Pyrrha freaking Nikos, was high praise indeed.

Weiss took this opportunity to pull out her scroll and check where her aura was at.

42%.

This would be over soon.

"You're out of Dust, aren't you?" Pyrrha asked.

Weiss sighed. She'd been counting.

She nodded, and Pyrrha nodded back, thinking.

"Good," she said after a moment, following with a good-natured laugh. "You were hitting a little too hard for my liking."

Weiss smiled again. Maybe it was vain to enjoy having her ego stroked, but Pyrrha Nikos praising her Dust casting just felt _good_.

"Shall we?" Pyrrha asked, pulling her spear out of the ground and flipping it upright.

With a sigh, Weiss pocketed her scroll. She raised her rapier.

_'Head up. Shoulders back. Left foot forward.'_

She nodded again.

"Do you mind if I put my shield up?" Pyrrha asked.

Weiss' confusion must have been visible on her face, because Pyrrha rushed to explain.

"I don't mean to be disrespectful! I just… I don't need to block your Dust attacks anymore, and it's kind of exhilarating to duel with someone that can actually keep up with me. It's been so long since I've had a hard challenge."

Flattering, but also… not? Pyrrha didn't think she'd need her shield for this next part. She didn't think Weiss would be able beat her without Dust.

Entirely true, but still…

On the other hand, shields were stupid. Also, getting into a pure sword duel with Pyrrha sounded… well, it sounded _fun_.

Ruby was rubbing off on her too much.

"Go for it," she said.

Pyrrha clamped her shield on her back with a smile, then nodded, switching to her sword.

She took two long strides forward and the fight started again.

Their fighting styles were distinctly different-Weiss stood sideways from her opponent, preferring to stab, whereas Pyrrha faced her full on and preferred slashing, often gripping her weapon two handed. Where Weiss stayed straight and in form, Pyrrha ducked low, jumped high, and employed quite a few spins that gave her swings extra momentum and that Ruby probably thought looked "super cool!".

Pyrrha slashed upwards, and when Weiss parried the blow to the side, she quickly flicked her wrist around and slashed downwards, catching Weiss' forearm. Weiss tried to answer with a stab at Pyrrha's gut, but Pyrrha gave a dismissive backhand with her free hand, deflecting the blow off her gauntlet.

'_Why don't I have any armor?'_

Pyrrha slashed at her. Weiss parried. Pyrrha brought both hands together into an overhead slam, and Weiss had to sidestep. There was no way she was strong enough to block that, especially with how exhausted she was.

She was forced back. She took a hit to the leg. Then another to the arm. Pyrrha brandished her blade, giving a looping flourish that Weiss wasn't sure how to react to, expecting an attack when there wasn't one. Then it turned into an arcing slash from above down across Weiss' torso. She ducked under it, but Pyrrha transitioned the missed strike into a thrust that struck Weiss in the stomach, making her stumble back and onto her knees, her legs giving out.

"Time!" she heard the professor yell.

That was it. It was over.

Weiss had lost.

* * *

**:)**

**So I got laid off, which kind of really sucks, but it's meant that I have a lot more time for writing at least. I hope ya'll like this chapter, and hopefully it's better quality than what I've been releasing lately. You guys seem to have liked it, but imo I've been lots of succ recently. But I'm feeling pretty proud of this chapter. **

**I've also retitled the chapters in the same way I've been doing them on my site, with the arc titles. This will be the last chapter of the Thaw arc. **

**Enjoy! Can't wait for your thoughts. (And remember, if you comment as a guest I can't respond.)**


	28. Hunting 3-W

**A few months ago...**

As far as Solitas Aprils went, this had been a warm one so far. The light snowfalls that followed after the freezing winters felt more like rain for practical purposes, melting soon after they touched the ground.

It was a sorry comparison to the _real_ snows. Those were nice.

Arthur had always liked the cold.

The heavy blizzards had also meant the roads had been impassable, hampering the law enforcement officers that were hunting him.

It was ironic, Arthur's fondness of winter, the season, and absolute terror of Winter the person. Ironwood's attack dog had been running him down for months now. She'd closed in on him a couple of weeks ago. He'd only managed to escape thanks to his semblance, an excessive amount of fire Dust to blow up his safe house, and the fact that the Schnee bitch had brought her cyber-children deathsquad-in-training, and she'd been more concerned for their welfare after the explosion than she'd been about pursuing Arthur.

She'd be on him again soon after this little heist he was about to pull off. He'd gotten into contact with a crimelord in Vale, some base idiot that had more money than a lesser mind deserved. Arthur had given him blueprints of some of the experimental weapon prototypes he'd designed for the Atlesian military in exchanged for a substantial amount of lien, and afterwards the man had offered him even more for the blueprints and training manuals of the new Atlesian Paladins.

Arthur didn't _need_ the money-he had more than enough to get passage off this continent-but it would be good to have. A good basis with which to start his new life elsewhere.

Not that he really had anything left to live for. His wife, dead. Daughter, brain-damaged and comatose, and the army Arthur had once been an integral component of was now preventing him from saving his child.

He'd realized long ago that he was only really running because he was supposed to. He was being chased, so naturally he ran in response. He knew it was weak. That he didn't have anything left. At this point, he'd be happy to get out of this bullshit kingdom just because it would be a nice "fuck you" to Ironwood. And getting out of here rich? That would make it even better. Especially since the asshole had frozen Arthur's accounts, the small fortune he'd accrued over his years of work. He deserved that money. He'd earned it. It was his reward for being a mind so superior to all others.

And now he was forced to live in squalor in the slums of Mantle, constantly ducking police patrols.

The facility he was preparing to break into now was one he'd worked in before. He'd helped the architects figure out the layout so many years ago. Not for security measures; he consulted more for the laboratories, what kind of facilities and Dust generators they would need and where. But he still picked up quite a bit on the security systems and protocols both from their conception and over the years of working here.

Which is why he knew this would not be easy.

There was a squad of mercenaries waiting for him nearby, hired with the initial payment from the upjumped Valish criminal. They'd be getting ready in a van painted to look like a Dustrician's service vehicle, six armed career soldiers, all ex-Atlesian military with dishonorable discharge. Three had aura, but just enough to give them a little more durability than the average soldier. They weren't huntsmen.

If she got here in time, Winter would cut through them like butter. Well, maybe like a soft cheese. They'd buy Arthur enough time to get out. And it would mean he wouldn't need to give them the second half of their payment.

He still hoped Winter wasn't nearby. The facility was on the floating island of Atlas, though several miles from Atlas Academy, and the Schnee's ship was far enough away that it wasn't visible anywhere in the sky-and it was a fairly large frigate. Drake Class, C-sized.

Arthur shook his head. He didn't like this constant fear he was in. He hadn't cared about the kill order on his head for a while until the bitch found him and… well, that had not been an even fight. There was a jagged scar running along Arthur's stomach to attest to that.

He wasn't sure how she'd been Dust casting at him-she hadn't had any Dust visible on her person. And she'd been far too fast with her sword for him to keep up with. Luckily, he'd planned ahead then, with the Dust bombs and defence turrets. This time, he wouldn't have those. He'd just need to be fast and get out.

The complex was large, taking up over half a block alone, and there was a good twenty feet and a barbed fenceline from it to the next buildings-private warehouses used for corporate storage, mostly. The complex itself had been a warehouse for Tillman & Graye Enterprises, but they'd been bought by the Schnee Dust Company, who gave it back to the government in one of their military contracts. It was secluded enough that Arthur wasn't overly worried about meddlesome bystanders, but close enough to other people and streets that there would be someone to blend in with while escaping.

From around the corner of one of these neighboring buildings, Arthur gave himself a long moment to look at the facility. The place he was having to sneak into. With criminals motivated only by greed. That Ironwood had cut him off from.

_His_ facility. It was his more than Ironwood's, that was certain. He had an office here, once. He'd spent all nighters here away from his family to meet _Ironwood's_ fucking deadlines.

What right did Ironwood have to name him a criminal?

Arthur let his anger build. It helped him think. Or rather, it kept him from wallowing in sadness from all he lost, which most certainly did _not_ help him think.

He closed his eyes, yet clear as day he could see Morgan's young face, expressionless and rimmed in the white of hospital pillows, unresponsive after the car crash.

Arthur could save her. He just needed more time. More access. The human brain was just a series of electrical impulses. If they were mapped correctly, it was possible to make a digital copy. And that strange artifact that Ironwood guarded so closely, that he could use to create matter from nothing to be used for the military equipment… Arthur wasn't sure how it worked, had only seen it being used by passing accident once, but if it was what it seemed to be, Arthur would have been able to make free, instant prototypes on a whim.

But no. Arthur had asked Ironwood to lend him the artifact and been refused and told to abandon his attempt to save his daughter.

So he'd tried to steal it. He'd gotten so close. To just outside the door. But that hadn't worked, and the attempt had resulted in his current fugitive status.

And now he was left with nothing but his anger.

That was fine. He'd be happy to share it.

He got back in his car to drive to the meeting point. The roads here were pretty clear, as they always were. In about ten minutes the day shift at the labs would end, changing the place from a bustling research center to an empty series of hallways lit only by emergency lights for most of the facility. That's when they'd try to get in, while security was dealing with everyone leaving. It was always an ordeal and a source of constant complaints from the engineers. It was a more popular subject at lunch than the weather or the game last weekend.

He spotted the van and the extra sedan, pulling over as much as he was able on the narrow two lane road. Getting out of his vehicle, he approached and knocked on the back door.

"Ready?" he asked before the door had even been pulled open.

The four men in the back were dressed, like Arthur, in standard uniform for undeployed Atlesian military, blue long-sleeved collared shirt and white pants. Everyone always complained about the white pants. They were apparently hard to keep clean because idiots haven't considered _not_ spilling food and drinks on their clothing.

These four would be smuggling Arthur into the facility in a separate car. The two up front were dressed as Dustricians and would be going for the camera feeds. Arthur had been using controlled EMP pulses to disrupt the input from the cameras where they fed into the on-site server, so the workers and guards in the compound wouldn't be surprised to see a maintenance crew coming in to look at the building's Dust wiring.

"Yep," one of the men answered. The leader, as Arthur understood it. Salfeld? Salfelt? Something like them. Arthur didn't care enough about these men to bother learning their names or group dynamic.

Arthur nodded, heading over to the extra car, the four men following. The Dustrician's van pulled away, clearing through security to get in position early. And it would minimize suspicions of the two cars arriving together, but Arthur wasn't overly worried about that. The security guards were bored and used to not dealing with enemies.

"We fixed up the upholstery," Sal-whatever said. "It'll probably be a bit of a tight fit, but you'll be able to fit inside the back seat just fine."

Arthur nodded. He had his satchel with his laptop, which was all he needed. Well, that and a connection to the facility's mainframe, but that's what this whole operation was for.

One of the men opened up the door, leaned in, and pulled on something. All three of the back seat cushions lifted up to reveal the thin compartment where Arthur would hide while they passed through the security gate.

This is what he'd been reduced to.

"Let's get going," he ordered simply.

He climbed into his spot. Uncomfortable was an understatement. It was all metal, for one. Arthur would have thought the thousands of lien he was giving these criminals would have warranted them at least springing for some cushion lining here.

Oh well. One more thing to fuel his anger.

He was also a bit taller than the compartment was long, so he had to bend his knees and neck to fit, which meant pressing them into the hard metal. Aura wouldn't do anything to help that, unfortunately.

Wordlessly, the man lowered the seats.

Complete and utter darkness. Not even any lights dancing behind his eyelids.

He knew there were tiny holes drilled in the back that led to the trunk space, per his request, so there was no risk of running out of air any time soon.

Still, this was… unnerving.

Arthur dismissed the jitters. They were irrational. It would be a maximum of ten minutes in this compartment. Ten minutes of discomfort. Nothing to get stressed about.

A muffled voice came from above.

"Can you hear us okay?"

Arthur opened his mouth to shout an affirmative, then decided against it. He wasn't one to raise his voice, and this small, cramped space redoubled that trait. It would likely echo deafeningly anyway.

He gave two knocks on the metal in front of him in response.

The car started up, the mild rumbling making the walls of this box rattle annoyingly because it meant Arthur's head rattled too.

Movement. He could feel the car moving and stopping, pressing him into one wall or the other from the momentum. His chest was constricting in mild, irrational fear at the tight space. Shallow breathing to not use up as much oxygen, though that was a moronic instinct. More oxygen was used that way because his breathing was faster.

He closed his eyes-not that it made any visual difference-and slowed his breathing, calmed himself.

'_Just focus on the project in front of you.'_

The car rolled to a slow stop, and Arthur could make out voices above him. They'd be at the security gate now. He couldn't make out the voice of the security guard, but he could hear the mercenaries in the car.

"Hey! We're here from Command again. General Ironwood said the guys that came to pick up that Doctor Watts guy's stuff missed something."

"..."

"Yeah, some data drive with secret shit above my paygrade. He said he wasn't sure it was here, but he wanted us to come do another sweep to make sure."

"..."

"No, he only sent me and Rys. Torel back there is being a lazy sack of crap and trying to get out of the office so our CO can't give him something to do."

"And I was told we were going for coffee," the man sitting above Arthur's head said.

The men all laughed, and Arthur was fairly certain the security guard did too.

"..."

"Visitor passes? Um. Up to you. These two chucklefucks can wait in the car if you want. I won't leave the heat on for 'em, though."

"Fuck you!"

"..."

"Awesome, thank you."

More laughter, then a few moments later they were moving again.

Hm. Arthur had hired these men because they were fighters, but apparently they were very good liars too.

There was a couple more minutes of this cramped space as they headed down the long drive and turned into the parking garage.

They pulled to a stop and one of the men above him knocked on the seat to signal they were letting him out. As if he hadn't already figured that out himself.

The seat pulled up and Arthur had to blink quickly as his eyes readjusted to the light. He pushed himself up and his locked up muscles protested the movement. This ache would last a while.

They were in the parking garage, on the first floor. Though a good deal empty now, there were still over a dozen staff members exiting the facility and walking to their cars. Arthur turned and faced the car, just in case any of them recognized him.

It wasn't likely. Arthur looked as different as he felt from the man he was months ago. His hair was longer, to the point where the mild curls were visible, and he'd done his best to keep it pushed back and straight and presentable. He also had a beard now. Something Gwen had always nagged him about. She kept telling him he looked goofy with _just_ the mustache, and that he should let his beard grow out. Arthur had refused, of course. Beards were barbaric and unprofessional. A well kept mustache was a masterpiece.

Not that his mustache was well kept now. It was hard to make trips to the barber for a cut and shave, or even just to the store to buy a razor, when you were being hunted by the military.

"Kuzen just messaged. They're ready to cut the cameras on your say-so," Sal-something told him.

Arthur nodded.

"So. Plan." Sal said to the group. "We wait a minute for it to finish clearing out, then go in and flash the visitor's badges. Rinn, give your badge to the doctor. You're on watch duty out here. If security gives us any trouble, we kill the cameras early and take out the guards."

The other three men nodded, then Sal turned to Arthur as he clipped the offered visitor's badge to his frocket.

"You said you need to get to one of the back labs, right? Which one?"

Arthur cleared his throat, jerking his head to the side a bit to pop his neck and get the crick out of his neck.

"Any of them. There are five separate labs that all have access to the mainframe. Any will do. We can go to the closest one. Maybe a minute of walking from the entrance."

Sal nodded. "And you said you can get us in?"

"I did."

"Still know the security codes or something? You sure they haven't changed them?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. Of course they'd changed them. They changed the codes every three days, _every_ day for the back lab where the cybernetics division worked and their implants were developed. But that wouldn't matter.

"I can get us in," he restated simply.

Sal raised his hands in surrender.

"Customer's always right, Sally," one of the men smirked to him.

"Hmph. Alright. Get ready. We'll walk in in just a sec. Let those fools clear out." Sal pointed at a couple of men still getting into their cars.

"I can't believe these scientists _actually _wear white lab coats," one of the men muttered.

Standard practice was to take them off and leave them in the labs, but a lot of people were lazy and many preferred to bring their coats home to wash instead of relying on the cleaning staff to do their jobs, which they often didn't.

Arthur didn't say any of that, though. That constituted small talk, and Arthur _loathed_ small talk.

The men all checked the guns at their hips. Clearly visible, open carry pistols. They were military personnel, after all. 'Sally' reached into the front seat of the car and pulled out a hat, one of the standard issue white military caps that were _technically_ part of the Atlesian military uniform but that nobody ever wore. He handed it to Arthur.

Though he hated the fact that it was necessary, Arthur put it on. It likely wouldn't make a difference-there were several guards working here that knew his face and name. But it was only prudent.

Arthur suspected they'd be killing the cameras and taking out the guards early.

"Aight, let's go," Sally ordered. "Rinn, eyes open. Stay on comms. Keep the car running."

"Yep."

Part of Arthur's brain wondered why this man was calling the shots when Arthur was the one paying for and planning the operation, but he didn't really mind not calling the shots. He'd never had any interest in being a leader of anything. He only ever cared about having the freedom to work on his projects.

He'd never cared for career advancement, either. That had happened naturally from his work and intelligence speaking for themselves, which was just the way he liked it.

The automatic doors hissed open for them, admitting them into the wide, white hallway that led to the security booth up ahead. Only one guard was present sitting in the middle of the two metal detectors, where there would be two stationed here in the morning. It was a guard Arthur recognized. He'd been manning this station once or twice a week when Arthur worked here.

He pulled the lip of the hat down a bit lower.

"Hoya!" Sally called out, revealing his northern Solitas heritage. "Did the front gate call yet? Here to scour the traitor doctor's office for some missing data drive."

Arthur's mustache twitched at that description of him. Traitor? No. _Ironwood_ was the traitor. _Ironwood_ betrayed _him_.

But Ironwood was in power, so it was Arthur that was labelled and disgraced as a traitor.

"Yeh, I heard," the guard answered. "Gonna take four of you to carry out a data drive?" he asked with a chuckle.

"Might take four of us to _find_ it," Sally answered.

"Pfft, I'm not helping you until I get the coffee I was promised," one of the other men poked.

"You see what I have to deal with?" Sally said familiarly to the guard.

The guard laughed. "We have some here like that too, bud. Come on through. Leave your guns here-" he tapped a bin sitting on the counter in front of him "-and keep your badges on you."

Sally glanced back at Arthur ever so quickly, and Arthur gave him a curt nod just as fast. "Sounds good."

They all placed their guns in the bin.

"Cool. So the kook's old office is down this hallway, second right, then it's… second or third door on the left? Not sure. It'll be the only one without a name next to the door though."

"Thanks."

It was the second door. The first office, really, because the first door on the left was a supply closet.

"Also, you guys shouldn't end up close enough, but one of the labs does wonky shit with scrolls. We recommend turnin' 'em off while you're here, not that anyone ever listens."

"Those people end up regretting not listening?" the coffee man asked.

The guard snorted and nodded. "Yeah, couple of them left here with super fucked screens. I always turn mine off whenever I have to walk back near the labs now."

"Thanks bunches, friend," Sally responded as he took his belt off and placed it on the counter by the metal detector. He then followed that up with his scroll, then stepped through without a hitch.

The rest of them followed suit. When it was Arthur's turn, he made sure to angle himself away from the guard.

It didn't matter. The man was on his scroll now, thumbing through a social media page.

"Good luck searchin', guys," he called over his shoulder as they walked down the hall. "See ya soon."

"Thanks, you too," Sally called back, though his eyes were focused on scanning the hallway ahead of them.

Amazing. Arthur just walked in, the guard not even giving him a second glance. He had even been brought up in the conversation and the guard hadn't made any connection between the name and Arthur's face, though he knew both.

Human stupidity never ceases to amaze.

Arthur took the lead as the group walked, leading them to the hallway that led towards his office but then turning right down another hallway that led to the experimental weapons lab.

"We're gonna miss those guns if shit hits the fan like you told us it likely will," Sally muttered.

"The lab we're heading to will have some toys for you to arm yourselves with," Arthur replied coolly.

"Oooh," one of the men breathed.

Sally nodded. "Good." He put his hand to his ear. "Take out their eyes, boys."

The act of disabling the security cameras of a medium security government facility felt like it should have more gravitas. Nothing happened. Nothing felt like it had changed. There was just an answering voice in the earpiece that said, "Done. Move fast."

Other than that, silence.

"So glad we have a nerd on the team now," Sally said into the comms with a grin.

"Keep talkin' shit and you'll see what this nerd can do to your bank accounts," the voice in the earpiece answered, making the men laugh.

They were getting close to the lab doors. Arthur closed his eyes, directing his aura towards his head, activating his semblance. When he opened his eyes again, everything looked the same.

Then he focused on the space _behind_ the wall they were walking by.

His senses extended to see through the wall, perfect clarity as though there were no wall separating him from the room at all.

People had referred to his semblance as x-ray vision, but that was disingenuous. That implied that he was looking _through_ the wall, but he wasn't. He was looking _past_ it.

He knew from his research that semblances impacted an aura-ed individual's personality, in both staggering and subtle ways. He liked to think that his semblance gave him a hunger and talent for seeing the truth, for looking past assumptions and misinformation and learning what truly _was_.

It was why he was an intellectual so far beyond all others.

He could see through anything and everything-except Dust, for some reason.

It also had a second part to it that was, admittedly, the flashier ability, and one that was going to be very useful here.

"Two in the back of the lab," he announced. They'd be the interns, left to document changes in some of the long-term experiments during the evening and leave the reports on the head scientist's desk, often with illegible handwriting that they'd get a lot of flak for the next day but never improve.

Kids, really. Arthur knew them, had worked with one of them. An undergrad at Atlas Science University. The one he knew was Jade… Something, a curious intellectual that reminded Arthur of a younger, female, distractible, hyper, dumber version of himself… Okay, maybe not much of a reminder, but she'd been friendly enough.

Arthur had hoped Morgan would be like her someday, if a bit quicker.

The other one had ear buds in and looked like he was concentrating more on his music than on the readings in front of him.

"I'd rather not kill them," he added.

"You can… see through walls?" one of the men asked, slowly and stupidly.

Arthur rolled his eyes. "No, I'm just guessing and pulling information out of my ass."

"Hey, man, I dunno you."

They got to the doors, large, magnetically sealed monsters that would only slide open if the proper code was punched into the keypad on the side, along with a retinal scan to assure you were part of the appropriate project team.

Or if it was opened from the inside with a simple push of a button.

"One moment," he said.

From his head, he pushed the effect of his semblance down to the rest of his body. The tingling sensation of disconnecting from the physical world ran up his spine, though he knew he looked no different from the outside.

With that feeling flowing through his body, he stepped forward, through the doors. _Past_ the doors.

While his form was passing through the door, Arthur felt that familiar buzz that he could only describe as feeling like human static. Like his atoms were bouncing around trying to find a place to put themselves.

He had to make sure to focus on _just_ moving through the door. When he was first discovering his semblance he'd simply made all of himself intangible and fallen through the floor, barely pushing himself back up before running out of aura. Arthur wasn't sure what would happen if he cut off his semblance while inside an object-maybe he'd just get shunted out to the nearest empty space. But he also wasn't eager to find out. The possibility of losing life and/or limb made it something not worth testing, though he very much wanted to.

Stepping through the door, Arthur didn't even need to take a moment to orient himself once he was in the room, as he'd had it in clear view already.

There wasn't any noise with his semblance, so the interns, both in the back jotting down notes on their clipboards as they stared sleepily at the Dust equipment in front of them, didn't notice his entrance.

He turned and pressed the button by the door and it hissed open.

That got Jade's attention, though the other intern kept dancing to himself and writing notes.

Jade's eyes went wide as she saw Arthur and the men that were now walking in.

"D-Doctor Watts?" she stammered. "I… I don't think you're supposed to be here…"

The other intern turned to her as she spoke, pulling out an earbud.

"What?" He saw where she was looking and turned, then jumped and dropped his clipboard when he noticed the newcomers to the lab.

"W-what?" he repeated.

Arthur walked forward calmly as the men around all apparently decided they really wanted a weapon in their hands again. They dove for the firearms on the lab tables around them, prototype weaponry that used Dust as much or more than they used traditional gun mechanics.

"You're right, Jade, I'm not. So I'd appreciate it if you could stay quiet and calm."

Jade and the boy both backed into the counter behind them.

"Um… okay," Jade said.

"Do you have your scrolls?"

"Y-yeah."

"But they're turned off!" the boy said. "'Cause they're doing an experiment with lightning Dust in Hall C, so… we don't want our… like-"

Arthur waved dismissively at the boy to shut him up. "Please put them on the table behind you."

Shaking, they both did so, and Arthur gestured for one of the men to go grab them.

It was Sally that moved forward, though he and the others had their attention mostly on the weapons in their hands.

"This is so fucking cool," one of the men behind Arthur muttered.

"Please don't fire that one!" Jade cried out, pointing to one. "It's… we haven't figured out how to calibrate it correctly. It-there's still about a sixty percent chance it'll backfire and fry you."

The man holding it quickly set it back down on the stand it had come from.

Sally grabbed the scroll, the interns flinching away from him at his approach.

"Please don't break it," the boy pleaded. "I just got a new one."

Arthur rolled his eyes again. Held hostage, the boy's concern was still on his scroll. Kids these days.

"Are you going to kill us?" Jade asked fearfully.

A little on the nose, that question. Arthur felt context should have informed that answer just fine.

"If I _wanted_ to kill you, it would have happened already," he replied, moving towards the back of the room where office with the terminal he needed to plug into was. "I sincerely hope you don't give me a reason to."

He got to the office, shutting the door behind him, and went to the computer where all the other equipment plugged into, giant bindings of cables that were hidden under the floor. It had no monitor around it-it didn't need one as it wasn't meant to be used. It was there to provide operating systems and data feeds to all the other tech in the lab, and it was out in the open so they could easily plug in and make changes or updates should the need arise.

Which is what Arthur was doing now.

He pulled out his laptop and the cable to attach it to the terminal, plugging both ends in where they needed to go. He opened up his screen and started with the command prompter. He was a Dust engineer first and foremost, but he was smart enough that he'd gotten masters degrees in several other subjects after graduating, even while working. One of them was computer science, and he used the knowledge he'd gained from that to write a program that would dig into and decrypt the files he needed on the Paladins.

He took a moment to stare at his wallpaper, a picture of him, Gwen, and Morgan outside Morgan's school on the day of her science fair, a blanket of snow over the building, the pavement, their hair and shoulders, and Morgan's giant gold trophy.

She was smiling so brightly, as was Gwen. Arthur had never been much of a smiler, but he'd felt so proud that day.

Pixelated Arthur's hands were resting on Pixelated Morgan's shoulder, and around his waist was wrapped one of Pixelated Gwen's slender arms. That was all he'd ever get again. Gwen was gone and Morgan might as well be; she was never waking up and Arthur was never getting back into that hospital room. How long before the hospital pulled the plug on his daughter?

He shook his head, banishing the thought, and typed in the script needed to run the program. The basic UI he'd set up for the software said it was loading, a little circle spinning in the grey box, the program's name of ' ' in the top left corner.

Arthur had hoped that little bit of humor would make him feel good when the time came to use the program, but right now he just felt empty. Breaking into his old lab, threatening innocent interns, hacking into a mainframe he'd helped build…

None of this was hurting Ironwood. None of this was making Ironwood pay for taking Arthur's child away from him.

Maybe there was _something_ he could do here, now.

This might be a chance for answers.

He duplicated the software program he was using, then went into the base files to make edits to the search parameters the clone was using. Instead of looking for Paladins, manual, training, controls, and the other keywords he was using to find the files the Valish criminal wanted, he used others: artifact, matter, matter generation, creation, material, met-

"_The term you're looking for is Relic of Creation."_

Arthur jumped at the voice. It was female, ageless, and felt like it had come from inside his head. But… that didn't make any sense.

The room was empty except for him.

Through the window on the door, he could see the mercenaries standing guard, and using his semblance to peek through the wall he had an angle to see the interns standing frightened in a corner.

There wasn't anyone hiding in the walls…

Maybe he was going crazy. Ironwood had made the claim that Arthur had suffered a psychotic break after the accident to justify his traitorous turn. It had been a fabricated lie, completely and absolutely… but now Arthur was hearing voices in his head?

"_You are quite sane, Doctor. I might be in your head, but I am very much real." _

Something pulled Arthur's attention to his laptop. It didn't make any sense-the voice was clearly in his head, not coming from the laptop speakers. But… some itch made him want to look at his wallpaper again.

He minimized the two windows and immediately jerked back.

Gwen was gone.

In her place, standing a bit off to the side from Arthur and Morgan's still figures, was another woman. Tall, very tall, with white hair in a strange bun, pale skin, a black, sleeveless dress, and red veins scarring across her complexion, up her neck and cheeks and down her bare arms. The whites of her eyes were black, and the irises were a deep blood red.

And she moved. Her hair and dress swayed to some invisible wind, and her eyes followed Arthur as he stepped back up to the laptop.

"_Doctor Watts,"_ she said in greeting. The thumbs of her clasped hands extended up in acknowledgement, then fell back down.

"Who…. what?"

There were so many questions running through his head. The first wasn't even 'Who is this woman?' It was 'How did this woman change my wallpaper image and then superimpose herself as a video?'

Photo editing and a green screen, most likely. But how was she making her voice appear in his head? Some sort of sound projection system that… manipulated the sound waves to bounce around his auricle before entering the ear canal, so it sounded like the noise was coming from inside his ears?

That wasn't even possible, was it?

Maybe some sort of semblance? That was usually the answer to the inexplicable.

The woman leveled an unnervingly knowing gaze at Arthur. "_For 'who', my name is Salem. As for what… well, I know you're familiar with semblances. Yours allows you to see into rooms. Mine allows me to see into hearts._"

Arthur filed that information away, though his pride reflexively bristled at the oversimplification of his semblance. "Mine is a fair bit more complicated than that," he argued.

Gwen had always told him he liked arguing too much.

"_As is mine_," the woman-Salem-replied graciously. "_And just as yours also lets you ignore the boundaries and laws of the physical universe, mine also allows me the ability to appear to those whose hearts I perceive, though at… significant cost._"

Arthur was quite fond of that description of his semblance. It made him sound so… absolute.

"I see. And this…?" He waved at his screen to try to indicate her and the weirdness of the situation.

"_I've found that everyone perceives me differently. It is a reflection of you, not a choice of mine_."

That idea sank in slowly, and Arthur nodded. What did that say about him, that this strange woman took the place of his wife on a computer screen?

Something to think on later. This woman said that this moment was costly, which likely meant it was limited too. And something about her felt… important. Her words carried a weight that told him he should listen.

"Where are you, then, that you can appear to me?" he asked. If he pushed his semblance to its outer limit, he could see out of the building, perhaps even into the first few walls of the neighboring buildings.

"_Oh, very, _very _far away_," Salem answered with a small smile that suggested some bit of humor.

Okay… "So why have you appeared to me, Miss Salem?"

Now she chuckled aloud. "'_Miss Salem.' Hmph. Well, because I noticed your potential, Doctor. You are intelligent, resourceful, powerful, and driven. And, like me, you have been betrayed._"

Arthur's eyes narrowed. While he appreciated being recognized for his talents, they were talents he was already very aware of, and flattery did nothing. But that last part… "What do you know of me?"

Salem began walking back and forth and the screen, and incredibly the snow at her feet parted and crunched in her wake.

'_Not a greenscreen, then.'_

"_I know that your family suffered a terrible accident. I know you tried to save your child."_ She turned and looked at the still form of Morgan a few feet away from her.

What did that look like to her? Was the world of the wallpaper tangible and three-dimensional from inside it? The parting of the snow seemed to indicate so.

"_And I know that you were spurned and betrayed for your efforts. By a man you thought you could trust."_

Arthur could feel his anger rising at the reminder.

"_I know that you believed you could save your dear Morgan if you had access to the Relic of Creation…" _She walked over and placed her hand on top of Pixelated Arthur's where it rested on Morgan's shoulder, and Arthur could swear he felt the soft touch of skin on the back of his hand in the real world. "_And I know… you were right."_

Those three words alone made Arthur's constant, simmering anger at Ironwood and Atlas and the world simply _erupt_.

He knew it. He _knew _it. He could save Morgan. He could bring her back and have his daughter again… He could… he…

"_How_?" he asked, angry tears threatening to spill over his cheeks. "How do you know?"

Salem regarded him with sad eyes. "_Let us just say… I am very old. I have seen and heard and _done _many things in my centuries. And I once held the Relic of Creation in the palm of my hands. I know you could succeed because I know what the Relic is capable of."_

Arthur's fists balled up. "What _is _it?"

Salem looked at him for a long moment, measuring him, as if she was deciding what to say. "_It is the heart of a dead god,"_ she finally answered.

"... What?"

God? Like the Lady of Light and Lord of Darkness? Or like the Elementals? If creation was supposed to be an element of Dust, but the elemental god of it died, maybe that might explain… well, no, the Dus-

"_God is a loose term. There is nothing divine about them. They were simply created with capabilities far beyond our own. Compared to us, they _are _gods. Or rather… they were."_ There was something smug in the way she said that last part.

"What… happened to them?"

"_Oh, most were already dead when they came to this world to escape their own. Only two came here alive. I believe you and the rest of Remnant now know them as the Lady of Light and the Lord of Darkness?"_

Arthur swallowed. So all those religious idiots were right? Arthur had never believed in those deities, never even thought the idea was worth entertaining. There was far more evidence and structural support in reality for the Elementals. But apparently that was wrong…

Arthur hated being wrong.

"_Oh, rest assured, they are not worth your worship. Their names were Aurora and Grimm, and they were not Light and Dark, they were Order and Chaos. They came to Remnant, bringing their dead brethren, the Relics, as we called them."_

"And… what did they do? What happened to them?" If there really _were_ gods on Remnant once-or rather, these higher beings, as Salem described them-then perhaps that might explain the origins of Dust, of aura, of semblances, of Grimm?

The one god's name was Grimm, apparently, so that might explain that.

"_They landed here, crashing through the moon as they did so, fleeing a threat on their home world. Aurora, as was her way, ingrained herself in the lives of the indigenous people she landed among, instilling order and eventually founding the kingdom of Vale. Grimm wandered the wilds and did whatever he wanted, as was _his _way. The rest is a long story that I would be happy to share with you, but our time is nearing its end."_

"Did they make the Grimm? And semblances? And Dust?" Arthur blurted the questions one after another, desperate to get as many answers, as many _truths_ as he could right now. He wasn't sure what made him feel so confident that this woman's answers were true, but that certainty was there nonetheless.

Salem raised a hand in a gesture of patience. "_No. The Grimm are part of the threat they fled. But Aurora named these perversions of creatures Grimm to turn humanity against her brother and the inherent Chaos he wrought. As for semblances and auras, Aurora told the world they were gifts from her. Auras were once called auroras, though the name shortened over the years."_

She left it at that, a long pause following in which Arthur expected her to keep speaking. The way she'd phrased it, "_Aurora told the world"_, suggested that there was more to the story.

"But they weren't?" he prompted.

"_No,"_ Salem replied.

"... Well, what are they, then?" Arthur asked, a bit of impatience creeping into his voice. If this woman knew the answers, why wouldn't she give them to Arthur? And why would she stop _there_ of all places?

"_Patience, Doctor Watts. You want answers. I understand that. But now is not the time. You have more pressing concerns. The Maiden knows where you are. She is coming for you."_

Maiden?

"Who?"

Salem cocked her head to the side and squinted off into the distance for a moment, then turned back to him.

"_Winter."_

"Shit."

How did Winter know where he was that quickly? How far was she?

He turned to do a scan of the surroundings through his semblance and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the Songbird, Winter's command vessel, with its long trailing ribbons and narrow frame coming in to stop at a low hover above the roof.

"Guys, we got a problem," the voice of the man in charge of disabling the cameras announced at the same moment.

"Shit," Arthur repeated.

Abandoning his conversation with Salem for the moment, he reopened the window of the datamining program, the one that was actually running, looking for the information on the Paladins.

83%.

"Shit."

He glanced up and saw the thin, white-and-blue clad Winter jump down from her ship and land gracefully on the roof, a thirty foot drop that she made without any rappel line.

"Shitshitshit."

"_Calm yourself,"_ Salem said, prompting Arthur to minimize the window again. "_You can get away. Now listen closely. You want answers. And I need help. As I said at the beginning, I was also betrayed. I was trapped by someone I trusted, someone I _loved_, and left broken. I have only recently been able to piece my consciousness back together. I need help breaking free of the chains that bind me. If I can promise you the answers you seek, revenge against the general, and a chance to save your daughter, will you help me?"_

There was a pleading look in her eyes that made Arthur swallow. Or maybe that was his nerves with the Schnee bitch so close.

The men were shouting into their earpieces, breaking from the positions they were holding to get ready for engagement. Sally ran up and knocked fervently on the door of the office to get Arthur's attention, but Arthur held up a finger and pulled out his earpiece.

There could be no distractions right now.

This woman said she was centuries old. That she was around and walked among gods. Her semblance was clearly powerful, and if her words were true…

If her words were true, then maybe there was a real chance that Arthur could get his daughter back.

"Yes," he decided. He would help this woman, this kindred spirit that understood him, if it meant getting to speak to Morgan again. "Where are you?"

"_The Crucible." _

"_What_?!" Arthur blurted.

The Crucible? She was trapped in a living hell of nightmare creatures? How was Arthur supposed to get to her.

And how the fuck was she using her semblance across literal _thousands_ of miles?

"_Listen! There is a man near you that can get you to the Crucible. Once you're there, I should be able to guide you the rest of the way to me." _

Fuck… Going to the Crucible wasn't exactly the vengeful, spiteful escape from Ironwood he'd been planning. But…

"Who is it?"

"_A man named Jacques Schnee." _

Arthur snorted, unable to stop himself from reacting to the irony.

Salem raised an eyebrow.

"You realize Jacques is Winter's father, right?" he asked. She seemed to know everything.

"_I do. Which is a large part of why he'll be willing to help you."_

"... Shit."

This was risky. Running from Winter and heading straight to her childhood home?

… Admittedly, she'd probably never think to look for him there…

"_Go,"_ Salem urged. "_Your time has run out. Come find me and I shall give you the answers and the vengeance and the chance you so dearly seek." _

When Arthur next blinked, Salem was gone, his wallpaper the same beautiful picture as before. It almost felt disconcerting to see Gwen there, though, as if her olive skin and red hair were supposed to be pale and white.

There was a beep, and this time it _did_ come from his laptop.

100%.

Time to go.

Arthur hurried to unplug his laptop, place it in his bag, then turned to survey the state of things.

Winter was one hallway away. The security guard they'd simply lied their way past was helping her fight three men in the hall-the man that had been left with the car and the two posing as Dustricians-though she clearly didn't need assistance.

She closed her fist and the gun of the man she was facing splintered into pieces, then she darted forward and skewered his upper thigh with her rapier. The man screamed in pain. The other man fired at her point blank three, four, five times, each bullet bouncing off her aura to no effect. He backed away and she slashed out, a wave of blue light extending from her rapier, effectively lengthening it, and she took off the man's hand. A spray of blood and another scream followed.

Behind her, the man coming from the getaway car shot once, twice-but not at her. At the back of the security guard.

He fell.

Winter turned, took in what happened, and a cold fury crossed her face. She extended her free hand out, fingers splayed, and there was a sound like cracking glass. A thin shard of rippling, translucent, nearly invisible force shot out from her palm, expanding as it traveled in a blink. When it reached the getaway driver, it was wide enough that it bit into both sides of the walls of the hall, and yet still thin enough that the driver's legs were cut cleanly out from under him just above the knee, another two spurts of blood another ragged scream resulting.

"DOCTOR!" Sally screamed, throwing open the office door. "We need to get out of here, now!"

Arthur looked at the terrified ex-soldier, then back to the outer hall.

Winter was racing up to the lab.

"No time. She's outside."

Sally turned and waved wildly at the other men to get in position. They each held a prototype weapon that would likely do more damage to them than it ever would to Winter. Sally ran for the interns and grabbed Jade, who screamed as he dragged her in front of him and held his gun to her head.

Winter got to the sealed door, looked at the keypad, then at the magnetically sealed door, and shook her head. She placed an open palm on the metal of the door, then twitched them ever so slightly like a claw.

The door creaked, groaned, and cracked along the edges.

She did it again, and the door responded again, crumpling inwards.

Arthur knew where this was going. There was no point in staying.

He turned and ran through the back wall of the office.

A few moments of intangible discomfort, then he was back in another wide hallway, a different laboratory in front of him. He ran through that door too, startling a lonely intern working within. He sprinted across the room and through the back wall again.

He kept running and running until he phased through a wall that brought him outside. He paused to take a breath, panting from the exertion. He wasn't in the best physical shape, but he was an intellectual, not an athlete.

He looked around.

Above him, Winter's ship hovered, threatening any escape attempt in view. Even now he could see the bottom of the hull open up to lower a massive machine gun that turned and pointed at him.

"Shit."

He jumped back inside just as a spray of bullets obliterated the concrete where he'd been standing.

He needed a way out.

Back in the weapons lab, shit was exploding and Winter was slicing through the mercenaries. Sally was disarmed-both without a weapon and without an arm-and Jade was cowering behind a table with the other boy, so apparently the hostage situation hadn't gone as Sally planned.

Winter would be finished there soon.

Arthur looked around, then noticed something that filled him with both relief and dread.

Had it really come down to _this_? Was this the level that Arthur would have to stoop to to get away?

Was he willing to?

Salem's words flashed through his head, her promise of answers and vengeance and a chance to save Morgan.

Yes. Yes, he was willing to. He had too much to live for.

Arthur dashed over, then chose to purposefully fall through the floor.

He landed on the walkway running along the facility's sewer line and the smell immediately made him vomit.

His hands on his knees, he finally picked himself up, only to vomit again.

The smell was truly, _truly _disgusting.

Arthur didn't belong here. He was _the_ Arthur Watts. He was the greatest mind in Atlas, probably in all of Remnant. He had seven master's degrees, twelve published and acclaimed research papers, three awards for scientific discoveries, six patents, four of which were technologies currently employed by both military and civilians, and he fucking _built this lab_. He didn't fucking belong down here, crawling amongst the rats and the shit.

Another thing to exact justice on Ironwood when the time came.

But first, answers. Then, Morgan. And the next step in that path was the Schnee Manor.

Arthur ran.


	29. Hunting 3-1

Friday mornings were always awesome. First, there was the fact that it was Friday. Like, yesss! And _then_ there was the fact that it was morning, which meant there was a whole _day_ of Friday stuff to do!

Except today. Today there weren't _normal_ Friday things to do. Today they were going on a Hunt!

Aaaaaaaah!

Professor Port had announced that this Friday they'd actually be skipping Professor Rustheart's training session to go on what he called a "chaperoned, objective-based mission". The chaperoned part made sense; they were brand new students and the professors wanted to keep an eye on them so they wouldn't get hurt. And probably to see how they did. The objective-based part had Ruby scratching her head a little. Like, what, was it going to be 'Objective: Go forth and slay all the Grimm-dudes' or something?

It would probably be more complicated than that.

Professor Porkybutt said Professor Ozpin would explain everything today. So that was cool! Professor Ozpin was neat. All… old and knowy and stuff.

She'd been woken up by the sound of Weiss returning from her morning run, which was kind of the routine now. Weiss would get back, Ruby would wake up, Ruby would wake up Yang and the noise of that would wake up Blake. Then they'd all go eat! Or in Weiss' case, not eat and sulk about losing to Pyrrha instead.

It made no sense! Ruby had told her over and over again that she'd been awesome! Heck, even Yang told her she was awesome! Like, that gravity well bomb black hole of snowflakey doom? THAT WAS THE SWEETEST THING EVER! And all her super ice blasts and the way she used her stairflakes? Raaaaad. And her sword fight at the end with Pyrrha? That looked like action movie awesomeness!

But Weiss lost, and apparently that had been all that mattered to her.

She'd been _extra_ hard on herself after realizing the rest of the team had won their matches. Yang beat Nora because Nora definitely didn't know how to fight Yang. She'd shocked herself with lightning Dust to power up and walloped Yang, thinking that would be enough, but Yang was too dang tanky. And then she'd been powered up by a full on Nora bop, so when she bopped back…

Well, it was Yang. It went about how one could expect a Yang bop to go.

And Blake beat Ren. It had been an epic dual-wielding battle of ninja jutsu flippy slashy awesomeness that had actually gone on for a while 'cause they had a hard time hitting each other, but it ended up just coming down to Blake being harder to hit because she has a semblance that's actually useful. Ren's is apparent just "emotional stability" or something. Like, what?

Ruby felt bad for people with lame semblances. Or… not _lame_, but not useful in a fight. Like Ren. Or Remus, who could warg into animals. That wouldn't be very useful if someone was attacking _him_. Or Orianna, who apparently was just really really really good at finding things or something. Like… her car keys? And Jaune still hasn't discovered his semblance, which totally sucked. Knowing you had a superpower and not knowing what it was?

That would totally suck.

Meanwhile, Yang had a button that said "dodge or die", Weiss was a wizard, Blake was a shadow clone ninja, and Ruby went NYEEEEEEEEERM.

Team RWBY was pretty stacked.

"Yang!" she squeaked as she bounced over to her sister's bunk, trying to be quiet so she wouldn't wake up Blake (she always did though, somehow). "Yang, wake up! Greet the new day!"

She gave her sister a shake or two or ten-it always took at _least_ three to wake up Yang-and Yang finally responded by sleepily swiping at her, twisting awkwardly to do it since she was lying face down.

"Stahp bein' shhhhtupid, Rubeh," she grumbled groggily into her pillows.

"No!" Ruby chirped in defiance. "Come on! Praise the sun!"

"Yer sush a geek."

Ruby rolled her eyes. She wasn't sure why her sister always made this such an ordeal. Once she actually got out of bed, Yang was a thousand percent a morning person! Probably 'cause Dad always called her his Sunny Little Dragon, so she felt like she was supposed to be energetic when the sun was up. Or maybe she just _was _that way.

Dad always called Ruby Peanut, which… yeah, she wasn't really sure what time of day a peanut was supposed to be energetic at. So she was energetic all the time! She was a morning person, and a night person, and an afternoon person, and a midnight snack person, and an any-other-time snack person…

"Yang!" she whisper-shouted.

"... wut?"

"It's Friday!"

"Don' chu haf an heiress tah go bother?"

Weiss' princess voice rang out from behind Ruby. "She couldn't. I was in the bathroom."

"Weiss!" Ruby cheered, immediately bounding over to her partner's side. Weiss looked like a million bajillion bucks in her combat outfit, as always. That was probably about the amount of money she was wearing in clothing, come to think of it.

"Help, I've made a mistake," Weiss muttered, eyes twinkling.

Ruby giggled, then gave Weiss a quick hug. "Good morning!" she cooed, trying to sound extra cheerful to prevent Weiss from falling into her self-depreciating funk.

Depreciating? Was that the right word? Depr...essing? De… Deprecating! That was it. Self-deprecating.

Blake had taught her that word yesterday when they were talking about how boo Weiss was being. Ruby had a Smart Person word in the Rubytionary now.

"Good morning," Weiss replied softly, giving Ruby a pat on the back instead of a hug because she's weird like that.

"Yang, wake up!" Ruby hissed across the room again.

"No, you."

"Sweet Lights, get out of bed so she shuts up, Yang," Blake groaned, pushing herself up to sit and rub at her eyes.

"Fiiiiiiine," Yang groaned, rolling out her bed and landing clumsily on the floor in front of Blake. It was easy for Yang to just roll out of bed 'cause she almost never slept under her blankets. She'd always said she didn't need 'em 'cause she's hot enough.

Then she'd wiggle her eyebrows like a total goomba.

She wandered over to her and Blake's bathroom to brush her teeth, leaning against the doorway and glaring mock-grumpily at Ruby while she did.

"You guys ready to hunt some evil Grimm?" Ruby asked, punching the air. "We gotta come up with, like, callouts and stuff, like what the spec ops dudes in the movies use so we can sound cool and so we can execute sweet combos without letting the Grimm know what we're doing."

"I don't think the Grimm speak Valish, Ruby," Blake pointed out as she rubbed her eyes.

"You're just going to spend the whole time trying to come up with ridiculous names for our combos, aren't you?" Weiss asked.

"Pbbbbt! Noooooo!" Ruby did her best to look offended.

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her.

"... Maybe a little bit," she admitted.

Weiss rolled her eyes and moved to sit on her bed so she could pull her heels on.

"Breakfast time?" Ruby asked excitedly.

Her partner shrugged. "That's what comes next, right?"

Yang spit and rinsed, then turned and pointed her toothbrush at Ruby. "Ruby!"

"Wot?!"

"I have an idea."

"Uh-oh," Weiss said quietly, making Ruby giggle.

"What idea?" she asked her sister.

Yang cleaned her toothbrush and put it up, then walked back out to the room. "Instead of you waking up and totally ruining my and Blake's sleep like the heathen you are, why don't you go work off your stupid amounts of energy by running with Weiss?"

Eyes widening, Ruby turned to her partner. That was a _great_ idea! Yang usually had really good ideas, but this one might take the cake!

If Ruby didn't eat the cake first…

Weiss sighed and her face fell into her hands. "I knew something horrible was going to happen the moment you said 'I have an idea'," she lamented at Yang.

"Heehee," Yang replied. She gave Blake a hand and pulled the girl to her feet, then Blake went to go brush her own teeth.

"Sooooo… is that a no?" Ruby asked Weiss. That would make her sad. Running with Weiss in the morning sounded awesome! But… not if it was gonna make Weiss grumpy, and Weiss seemed to need alone time sometimes, so it might make her grumpy to have Ruby there…

"... Nooo," Weiss sighed. "You're gonna be all sad if I say no now that you have the idea in your head, and we can't have that, can we."

"Nnnnope!" Ruby cheered, ploppin' her patooty on Weiss' bed to give the girl a big ol' sideways hug. "It's gonna be so much fun!"

"It's a morning run, Ruby," Weiss replied tiredly. "It's not _supposed _to be fun."

That sounded dumb. Why would you do something that wasn't fun? "But it _can_ be," Ruby stressed.

"It doesn't _have_ to b-you know what? Nevermind. I'm not winning this." Weiss stood and headed to the door, pulling it open and holding it, looking at Ruby. "Breakfast?"

"Breakfaaast!" Ruby agreed. "Our stuff or cafeteria?"

Weiss shrugged. "Up to you. I assume you'll say 'cafeteria' because it has-"

"Cookieeees!" Ruby cheered.

"So loud," Blake grumbled, trudging after Yang, who was filing out behind Ruby.

"Um," Weiss declared in a tone of voice that very clearly meant 'Stop'.

"What?" Ruby asked, bouncing excitedly in the hallway and impatient to get to the food.

"You're all still in your pajamas?" Weiss said, like that should be obvious and a problem and obviously a problem.

Ruby looked at herself, with her slightly-too-small tank top and pink-with-roses pajama bottoms, then at Weiss, who looked like a princess.

Maybe there was something off here…

"Pfft, who cares?" Yang asked, waddling down the hall. "It's Friday. And we know everyone that's gonna be there anyway. Which isn't many people anyway, 'cause most people aren't up at eight every morning 'cause they're not _psychopaths_!"

Weiss huffed and crossed her arms, still standing firmly in the doorway. "Yang, _you_ look positively indecent!"

Yang stopped and turned. "Huh?! What? Why?"

"Look how short your shorts are! They might as well be underwear!"

Yang's eyes went wide for a moment, then she smirked. "You checkin' out my butt, Ice Queen?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I don't have to be 'checking it out', it's already _hanging _out for the whole world to see!"

Yang shrugged. "It's fiiiine. What do you think, Blake?" She turned her back to the group and the looked back over her shoulder at her partner, giving her butt a shake. "Do I look 'decent' enough?"

Blake's cheeks went bright red, but she managed to keep her cool, nonchalant look up. She took a moment to scrutinize Yang's posterior, then shrugged lightly.

"Seems fine to me."

"Ugh!" Weiss huffed, storming down the hall past all of them. "You're sitting at another table!" she declared as she passed Yang. "I don't want to be affiliated with any of you! Ever again!"

"What did _I _do?!" Ruby cried, skipping up to Weiss' side.

"You're related to her!"

"That's not _my_ fault!"

"Ruby Rose!" Yang shouted. "Stop bein' a traitor!"

"No!"

"Are you telling us you want to be judged by your family members, Weiss?" Blake asked dryly.

Weiss wheeled around with a glare, but when she opened her mouth to speak, she floundered for a second. "... Y-you mean the richest, most successful family in the world?" she finally stammered haughtily.

"That everyone hates?"

"That's not true at _all_," Weiss shot back. "Just because you're an animal lover doesn't mean everyone agrees with you."

With that, Weiss turned and stormed away again, and Blake was now steaming furiously.

"Blaaaaake," Ruby whined. "Why'd you _do_ thaaat?!"

"Do _what_?"

"Pick a fight," Yang answered. "I'm not one to shy away from fights, but that was just… pointless."

"I thought things were better!" Ruby whined some more.

Hadn't she fixed this?

Blake crossed her arms. "I mean, I'm fine being around her now, but… what, we're just supposed to all be _okay_ with the fact that she's a racist ass?"

"No, but do you really think _that's_ helping?" Yang asked.

"Wha-why is it our responsibility to help her?"

"Because that's what friends do!" Ruby chirped.

Blake raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"What do you _want_ here, Blake?" Yang asked. "Are you just trying to make her feel bad about her views, or are you actually trying to change them? Because you're not succeeding at either and you're just pissing her _and_ yourself off and making my and Ruby's day miserable."

Blake glowered and lowered her head. "I've _tried_ changing the minds of people like that. It never works. What's the point in trying?"

Yang shrugged. "Oh, I dunno. Maybe getting the future CEO of the SDC to be kind to and respect faunus might make things better for them in the future or something," she drawled, kinda sarcastically.

Blake's eyes narrowed at Yang's tone, then widened as she considered Yang's words.

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed, though she wasn't totally following why Yang thought that was important to say. Shouldn't people being kind and respectful to others be… like, _duh_?

Then Blake sighed and started trudging down the hall, head down. "It doesn't matter. It's like I said. People like that don't change."

"I dunno," Yang said again, though she obviously knew (again) 'cause she was wise and cool like that. "Maybe if someone, say, had some personal experience about life as a faunus, or a unique perspective on them that Weiss hasn't seen or heard before because she grew up with an asswipe family, and that someone, say, _shared_ those things with her, then, ya know, maybe she could change."

Blake stopped and turned to look at Yang with wide, horrified eyes. "Wh-what do you mean?"

Yang rolled her eyes. "I _mean_ I'm not an _idiot_, Blake."

"Weeeeeelllll," Ruby joked.

"Shush," Yang hissed lightly, not taking her eyes off Blake's. "Not now, Ruby."

… Oh.

What the heck was going on?

"You… know?" Blake asked, still looking totally spooked.

"I carried your drunk ass to bed, babe. Of course I know. You see these?" Yang pointed at her eyes. "They're called eyeballs. And mine work. Not as well as your ears, probably, but they work."

'… _Do ninjas have really good hearing? Probably. That sounds right.'_

Blake went from horrified to just flat stunned. Face blank, eyes wide, unmoving. Kinda like Weiss when she went all frozen statue-y, though Blake's bow kinda wiggled from the breeze of the AC or something, sorta ruining the effect.

"I…" Blake trailed off.

"What are we talking about right now?" Ruby asked. This conversation had gotten really confusing.

"Yeah, Blake. What are we talking about right now?" Yang prodded. "Why don't you share with your _teammates_?"

Blake's eyes still hadn't left Yang, and she still looked like a twitchy statue.

A long moment passed…

… then Blake shook her head.

"Nothing. We're not talking about anything."

"Blake-"

"No." Blake cut her partner off with a jerk of her hands. "We're not telling her so she's not telling Weiss."

"Blake! Iorderyouasyourcaptaintotellmewhat'sgoingon!" Ruby shouted as she stamped her foot, her voice unintentionally hiking up a thousand octaves.

Yang sighed heavily. "Ruby?"

"What?!" Ruby cried. Yang sounded disappointed or something and Ruby wasn't sure what she'd done wrong.

"You see how serious we're being, right? Can you at least _try_ sounding serious? It's easy. Even _I _can do it."

"How am I supposed to sound as serious as you? You're four inches taller than me!"

"I… what? What does that-you know what? Nevermind. I need to talk to Blake. You should go after Weiss, make sure she's aight and-"

A snort from Blake interrupted her, and Yang turned on her fast enough that her hair whooshed around.

"_What_?"

Blake shrugged. "Nothing. Just, why are you worried if _she's_ okay? She made another racist rant when I didn't even say anything bad-"

"You _did_ though, Blake!"

"Like what?"

"You threw her family in her face! For no reason! She was making a joke!"

"That was a joke? She said she didn't want to have anything to do with us!"

Yang rolled her eyes. "You think she was being serious?"

"She _sounded_ serious."

"She's got a weird sense of humor, Blake. She was homeschooled and spent ninety-nine point nine percent of her life with her butthole family and doesn't know how having friends works. And you, again, threw that family in her face!"

"Threw-Yang, she defended them! 'Richest and most succe-"

"Of course she defended them! They're her family and she's stubborn and defiant and has some weird ideas in her head about her responsibilities for upholding the Schnee reputation. And do you think _I_ wouldn't react the same way if you talked about Ruby that way?"

Blake's arms flew out to her sides in an exaggerated 'what the heck' motion. "Ruby is a good person that's _worth_ defending! Of course you should defend her!"

"And you think Weiss shouldn't defend herself?"

"She's not, she's defending her f-"

"No, she _is_. Because she knows people make assumptions about her based on her family! Just like you're doing now!"

"You mean just like she does with faunus?"

"YES!" Yang answered, loud as heck. Her eyes were red and there were some licks of flame crawling up her hair now. "If you hate that she does it to you, why is it okay for you to do it to her!"

Blake frowned, staying silent.

"You're right, she's doing the same thing to faunus that people do to her because of her family. Which means you have the perfect opportunity to get her to _relate_ and realize what she's doing and how she feels is wrong!"

Blake blinked. "Bu-but if she thinks she's supposed to represent her family of racist assholes that profit from grinding the poor and bully and bribe to dominate their industry, why would she ever feel like her views are wrong?"

"Well if you'd bothered to stick around when her father called, you'd know she doesn't _actually_ like her family. She's terrified of her abusive douchebag father and knows he's a terrible person, she's disgusted by her drunk socialite mother, she doesn't like her little brother 'cause she sees a lot of traits she has in him but hasn't realized that's why, and she loves her sister but has some huge self esteem issues because apparently her sister is, like, a super person."

Ruby's mouth hung open a bit. "How do you know all that, Yang?" _Ruby_ hadn't known… well, most of that, actually, and she'd been hanging out with Weiss _way_ more than Yang.

"I-"

"And what," Blake cut in, "you think _my _life hasn't been painful and complicated? She's not the only one deali-"

"We wouldn't fucking _know_, Blake, 'cause you won't _tell us_ anything about yourself!"

Blake was stunned into silence again.

"Yaaang," Ruby whispered. "Your eyes are doing the thing…" She reached up to try to pat out some of the little flames in Yang's hair.

"Sorry," Yang whispered back, closing her eyes and taking a moment to chill out. She then reached up to wrap her fingers around Ruby's to pull her close and give her a kiss on top of her head. "Go on, Rubes. Talk to Weiss, make sure she's not too upset. If she is, when we walk into the cafeteria just shake your head at me and we'll sit somewhere else, okay?"

"But Yaaaang! We gotta eat breakfast as a team!"

This was the worst! Why was there so much drama in this team again?! Why couldn't they just be friends? It was really easy! Just instead of something dumb, mean things, you say nice things! And maybe share some cookies! Cookies made everything better.

"I know. Hopefully Weiss is okay and we can. But I don't want more fights to happen right before we're about to go wander into a forest filled with monsters and need to rely on each other to not die.."

That… made sense.

"Okayyy," Ruby sighed, giving Yang a hug and then turning to shuffle away.

She trudged a bit, trying to go really slow so she could listen a bit more to Yang getting all wisdomy and confusing on Blake…

"_Go_, Ruby."

"Maaaaaan."

Ruby rosed away.

Weiss was just walking away from the cafeteria counter with a plate with apple slices and grapes, a glass of orange juice in her other hand.

Like, literally _all_ the fruits.

Ruby zipped over and skidded to a stop in front of the princess.

"Hiya!"

Weiss stopped and met Ruby's eyes, pursing her lips like she was trying not to smile. Then she looked Ruby up and down and remembered Ruby was still in her PJs and half rolled her eyes, walking to a table.

"Get your breakfast cookies, dolt," she sighed as she passed Ruby. It didn't seem like an upset sigh, though. So that was good!

Ruby zoomed through the line, grabbing cookies and some bacon ('cause Yang and Dad were always telling her to make sure she ate lots of protein), then rushed to the booth where Weiss sat, sliding next to her with a bounce.

"Hiya," Weiss said softly.

"Hehe, that sounds totally ridiculous when you say it," Ruby giggled.

"What?! Why?"

"'Cause you're all sophisticated and princessy, so it's really funny to hear you say 'hiya'!"

Weiss pouted and crunched on an apple slice. "Fine. I guess I just won't try speaking Ruby...ese again."

"Noooo, keep doing it!" Ruby cooed.

"You said I sounded ridiculous!"

"Yeah! Sounding ridiculous is awesome!"

Weiss leveled a deadpan glare at Ruby, then popped a grape into her mouth without breaking eye contact. Ruby narrowed her eyes, and Weiss narrowed hers back.

…

Ruby broke first, letting out a little giggle then dominoed into a fit of them.

Looking really pleased with herself, Weiss went back to her food.

"So howya doin'?" Ruby asked before shoving a cookie in her face.

"You're asking how pissed off I am at Blake right now," she replied darkly.

"Hrrmph?! Nh-hrrr!" Ruby grunted through her mouthful. She swallowed. "I just, ya know, wanted to know how you were doing!"

The look Weiss gave her at the answer was definitely unimpressed. "I'm fine, Ruby."

Weiss was always saying she was "fine", but… she wasn't doing the statue thing, and she'd just been smiling and being silly with Ruby, so maybe she really _was_ fine?

She hoped so.

"So… I was thinking about combo move names for the two of us…" Ruby started.

"Of course you were," Weiss smiled.

"Mhm!" Ruby took a bite of bacon. "Whatchu think abou' Ishe Frower?"

"What have I told you about-"

"I know, I know," Ruby interrupted with a wave before swallowing. "So, Ice Flower!"

"Seems a little on the nose."

"What abooout, like, White… Flower? White Rose?"

"But why am I a color and you're a symbol?" Weiss asked. "Wouldn't, say, Snow Rose make more sense?"

"We could have two different names with the color/symbol theme! Like, White Rose and then… Red Snow?"

"That sounds like we're bleeding on snow or something."

Ruby grinned. "_We're_ not bleeding, Weiss. Our enemies are! Huehuehue!"

Weiss half rolled her eyes. "Have you thought about naming the combos after what they actually _do_ instead of the people performing them?"

"Hm. We'd need to figure what the combos are to do that, though." Ruby ate another cookies as she thought. Did that make it a Thinking Cookie?

"True."

"What about that thing we did against the Nevermore? All four of us did that. What should we call it?"

"Well, we slingshotted you at the bad guy, so… Ruby… Shot? No, that was terrible."

"Lil' bit, yeah," Ruby laughed.

Yang and Blake walked into the cafeteria then, and Ruby waited while Yang scanned the tables to find her. When she did, she gave Ruby a questioning thumbs up, to which Ruby nodded excitedly.

Weiss was busy arranging her remaining five apple slices into a cute little star and didn't notice.

"What about tomorrow?" Ruby asked.

"What about it?"

"You ready to go on a Hunt?!" Ruby bounced on the booth cushion as she asked. "We're gonna kill, like, _all_ the Grimm!"

"In the Emerald Forest?"

"Why stop there? Les go get 'em all!"

Weiss quirked an eyebrow at her. "There are some pretty scary Grimm out there."

"Pfft! Grimm aren't scary. They're super lame and totally killable!"

That got her a frown. "I dunno. The Ursai are… they're definitely pretty scary, and they're not even that big compared to some of the greater Grimm."

"You think Ursai are scary?" Ruby blinked. She'd never even considered a huntress could be scared of Grimm. Their whole _thing_ was killing Grimm! And Weiss was, like, super duper powerful! There was no reason for her to be scared of those glorified angry teddy bears!

"I mean… I think _all_ Grimm are a little scary."

"Even Beowolves?"

"Not a lot!" Weiss quickly modified. "Just… I don't know. They're big and scary-looking and they just… _radiate_ hate. How can you stand in front of a monster that wants nothing but to kill you and not be… freaked out?"

Huh. Ruby hadn't really considered that. For her it had always been Grimm were evil monsters and she was a good huntress. How the Grimm made her feel had never been something she considered. It was just… she was supposed to kill the monsters, so she did.

But Weiss hadn't grown up in a family of huntsman like she had. The Schnee Mansion also probably hadn't ever had the occasional Grimm visitors that their house in Patch had. Maybe Weiss just needed to get used to the Grimm.

"I suppose that _are_ pretty freaky," Ruby agreed. _She_ didn't think they were freaky, but she could see why Weiss might.

Weiss nodded, turning back to her plate, where she put a grape in the spaces between each of her apple slices. It was pretty cute.

"Suh, dudettes," Yang announced herself, carrying a plate of eggs and bacon and the sorry cafeteria excuses for has browns. Blake was with her, with the same things minus the eggs, and in much smaller portions.

"Suh!" Ruby chirped.

Blake stayed silent, as did Weiss. Awkwarrrrd.

"Of course you jerks took _both_ the booth seats, Yang grumbled as she sat in the chair across from Ruby.

"Don't be a slowpoke, then!"

"You have a skewed perception of slow, Cap. We were walking _right_ behind you, you just went all zoomy like a crazy person."

"But it's my semblance! Why is it crazy for me to zooooom?"

Yang rolled her eyes. "It's _eight in the morning_, Ruby! Who needs to go _that_ fast at eight in the morning?!"

Now it was Ruby's turn to roll her eyes. "_Anyway_, you guys excited to go on a Hunt?! We should figure out, like, roles or whatever! Yang, you go first as our frontline, be our tank. Blake, you gotta be all flanky on the sides, be our assassin. Weiss, you be behind Yang, be our magey support girl. Then I'll be in the way back sniping and being our hypercarry!"

There was a long, definitely not-excited-enough silence.

"Ruby," Yang spoke up, "it's a Hunt, not a video game."

"Pffft," Ruby waved a hand at her dumb sister. "It's totally a video game! I'll tell you guys where to go and what to do like an RTS! It'll be great!"

"I don't really know what that means, but I know I don't like it," Weiss commented snidely.

Traitor!

"It means Ruby's a dolt," Yang said with a smile.

"It is known," Blake grinned.

"Hey! Why are we beating up on Ruby again?!" Ruby protested. This kept happening! Why did this keep happening?! These hooligans had no respect for their captain!

"I'm just sayin', you're not the brightest cookie in the coffin," Yang replied with a wicked grin.

Blake busted out laughing at that, and even Weiss looked like she was hiding a grin behind her hand.

"That's brilliant," Blake giggled.

Ruby pouted.

"And the faces you make are pretty funny," Weiss added, her own expression perfectly back to her standard impassiveness.

Ruby pouted harder.

"Like that, yes," Weiss said, cracking a tiny grin.

"Ya'll are butts!" Ruby complained, but she couldn't help smiling back. Weiss smiling made her want to cheer.

She didn't though. That would get her yelled at. So she settled for just a smile.

"We were trying to come up with cool combo move names for us to use today," Ruby told her sister, slipping back to their previous discussion.

"_We_ sounds like a lot of people," Weiss grumbled.

"Yeah okay Miss 'Ruby Shot'," Ruby teased back.

Weiss pointed an apple slice at Ruby's nose. "I already admitted that was terrible, okay? And I came up with that after, like, _two_ seconds!" She nomphed on her apple slice with a loud crunch.

"What even _is_ a Ruby Shot supposed to be?" Blake asked.

"That thing we did against the Nevermore!" Ruby answered, happy that the discussion was rolling.

"Ooooh, like a Ruby Slingshot?" Yang realized.

"Exactly!" Weiss perked up.

"Yeah, that's terrible."

Weiss slumped down.

"What if, like, we had Yang charge at people and Weiss summon glyphs in front of her to shield her and we call it Dragon Knight!" Ruby grinned.

"That sounds metal," Yang agreed. "I approve of being a Dragon Knight."

"Oooh, and Blake could toss me her ribbon and I can use my semblance and zip around and drag her behind me for her to slice and dice the baddies and we can call it Shadow Reaper!"

Blake quirked a smile. "This seems acceptable."

"Would that even work?" Weiss asked. "If you take one end of the ribbon with you into your Rose dimension, would it stay connected to the rest of it?"

"Uh… I dunno! Let's find out!"

Blake frowned. "Um, we're _not _experimenting with Gambol Shroud."

"We can use a string, chillll," Yang said, bumping her partner's shoulder.

"Or Yang's hair," Weiss offered with a grin. "I'm sure it's long enough."

Yang's eyes narrowed at Weiss. "You're making jokes."

Weiss nodded, pursing her lips with a smile like she was pleased with herself.

"I don't like your jokes," Yang said with a playful edge to her voice.

Weiss' face twisted into an adorable pout. "Well… you're dumb!"

"Ouch. Got me."

The rest of the breakfast passed happily, though Ruby noted that Weiss and Blake were back to not speaking directly to each other.

Poo.

When it came time to head to the airstrip to meet the class, they headed back to change into their combat outfits (with Weiss glaring at them the whole time), then Ruby led the way.

"I hope we get Professor Awesome as our chaperone," Yang said as they strolled across the sidewalk together.

"Or Professor Oobles!" Ruby added.

"Rubes, you're the _only_ one that would ever be able to keep up with that dude."

Ruby cackled at that. "Yeah, and then he'd tell you slowpokes to _hurry up_! And maybe you'll actually listen to _him_, so I won't have to wait for you guys so much anymore!"

Yang sighed loudly. "Weiss, do you think you could beat her in a race? Knock her down a peg?"

Ruby turned excitedly, skipping backwards now. She liked where this was going.

"If she gets to use her semblance?" Weiss asked after a moment of thought.

"Yeah."

"No."

Yang frowned. "But you can use yours too."

"Still no."

"Awww. What are we even paying you for?"

Weiss' eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"

"What if you used your semblance to block her? Wall her off and run past her?"

Weiss' eyes narrowed in thought. "Hmm… Maybe…"

"Hey, that sounds like cheating!" Ruby chirped.

"Nawww, it would just be both of you using your abilities to their best advantage!" Yang argued.

"Yeah, to cheat!"

"What's the matter, Rubes? Afraid you'd loooooooose?"

…

It would be super possible, really. If Weiss summoned those black glyphs in Ruby's face as she ran, she could get super slowed down having to spend energy to unstick herself.

"No!"

"Uh-huh."

"Blake, help me out here! Blocking me with glyphs would be totally cheating, right?!"

Blake rolled her eyes at being dragged into the conversation. "Depends. If the competition is just 'who's fastest', then yes. But we all know you'd win that anyway. But if the competition is 'who can use their semblance to get from point A to point B first', then it seems like fair game."

…

"Ya'll are butts!" Ruby said again, turning back around.

"Why don't you test it out?" Yang grinned, reaching forward to tussle Ruby's hair. Ruby's back was turned to her sister now, so she didn't know it was coming until it was too late to dodge.

"Nah," Ruby answered after hopping to the side, out of reach of her sister. "Weiss doesn't want to."

That seemed like a diplomatic and totally plausible answer.

"Oh really?" Yang teased. "You sure that's why you don't want to?"

"Yep! Right, Weiss? You don't want to spend energy racing right before a Hunt, right?"

Weiss quirked an eyebrow and the corners of her lips at Ruby. "No, I suppose not," she said.

'_Phew.'_

Ruby was glad they wouldn't have to race. Not 'cause she was scared of losing! Just 'cause… she didn't want to embarrass Weiss!

Yep. That was it.

And also, if she _did_ lose-which she wouldn't!-then that would be extra sad 'cause speed was, like, kinda her thing.

Above their heads, two Chariots from the city flew by, their Dust engines giving a dull roar as they headed toward the airfield. Those were probably the ones they'd be getting on to head to the Emerald Forest!

When they'd gone to the Emerald Forest a couple weeks ago-wow, was it really that long ago?-for the whole chess piece trial thing, that had been the first time Ruby had ridden in a Chariot. It was so cool! She had felt like a super soldier in an action movie about to be deployed in some super scary warzone.

And the Sky Cruiser they'd ridden on to get to Beacon had been the first time she'd flown anywhere! Like, on a vehicle. She flew with her semblance all the time, obviously.

Flying was so cool. It made her feel so… uninhibited. Like she could go anywhere, do anything.

"You think they'll ever teach use how to fly one of those?" Yang asked, looking up to follow the same things Ruby was looking at.

"That would be so awesome!" Ruby exclaimed with a skip. "Whenever we get a mission we'd be able to fly out there like superheroes! And we can paint it red and black and put Roses on the side-or maybe on the wings? I dunno, but it would be really cool!"

"Um, we'd _definitely _paint it yellow and black. Sorry, Cap," Yang said. "And it would have a dragon on it. Somewhere."

"Nuh-uh! Red is way cooler than yellow!"

"Hmm… Nope! It's definitely yellow."

"Veto!"

"We could just paint it black," Blake interjected. "We all have black in our outfits."

"Weiss doesn't!" Ruby chirped immediately. Weiss, who'd opened her mouth to speak-which Ruby probably should have let happen so she'd actually say something to Blake, crap-snapped it shut and blinked at Ruby in mild surprise.

Yang and Blake looked over to inspect Weiss' clothes, and she got all adorably self conscious and scrunched up her nose to frown at them.

"Black and white?" Blake offered after confirming Ruby was right.

"That's just _your_ outfit color!" Ruby complained.

"Uh, _yeah_. I wouldn't be wearing it if it wasn't the best."

"Black and white's so boring though!"

"Wow, rude," Blake huffed.

Ruby immediately tried to backpedal. "Not you! Just the color scheme. It looks really good on you though! I'm sure a lot of things do! I just mea-"

"Rubes, she's kidding," Yang cut her off. "Relax."

Blake was looking ahead now. Like, straight ahead. And if Ruby squinted really hard she could almost make out a lip twitch…

Darn that girl.

"I like black and white," Weiss declared. "It's very… absolute. I think it would make a nice paint job on an airship."

"Hmneeeh?" Ruby protested in disbelief. Weiss was always wearing pretty blues and lilacs and purples! How could she be okay with black and white?!

"I'm… not sure what that means," Weiss said, raising an eyebrow at Ruby.

"It means I still want a dragon on it somewhere!" Yang grossly mistranslated.

"It hardly matters anyway. We don't know if they're going to teach us to fly, and they almost _definitely_ won't give us our own Chariot. Or whatever that rubbish Valish one that it's replacing is."

"But you could totally buy us one!" Yang said cheerfully.

"Well..sure. But I won't if we don't know how to fly it."

"So you will if we do?" Ruby asked, excitement building.

"I don't know! We'll have to see." Weiss glanced sideways at Ruby then, and something in Ruby's expression made her frown again. "Maybe. Just don't beg me for it!"

""Did she-" she leaned forward to look around Weiss and see Ruby's face "-oof, yeah. Hittin' you with those puppy dog eyes, huh? Have mercy, Rubes. You'll break her spirit."

"N-she-no!" Weiss sputtered. "... Shut up!"

"I wasn't even doing puppy dog eyes!" Ruby argued. She hadn't been! Not on purpose, anyway.

"Sure you weren't," Yang grinned.

"I wasn't!"

"Shut up, both of you!" Weiss huffed. "At least _try _not to make us look like a bunch of idiots in front of the other teams!"

Ruby looked forward to see they were almost to their destination. Two teams-it looked like Team KORL and Team CRDL from here-were already standing around in their groups, the Chariots that had flown overhead touching down nearby. All four professors and Professor Ozpin were also there, huddled up and discussing something that was probably super wise and serious. And also whatever Porkybutt said.

"You forget, Weiss," Yang said, "I _am_ a bunch of idiots."

"You mean you are _an_ idiot? Singular?"

"I meant what I said."

Blake let out a girly little giggle at that, and Yang turned to beam at her proudly.

"Ahem!" Ruby declared. "Silence thy ridiculousness, dear sister. Be a respectable, uh, dudette and comport yourself thusly!"

Dudette probably was not the right word to use there.

Weiss sighed heavily by her side.

"Dolt?" Ruby asked.

"Mhm."

"Darn."

She and Weiss stayed quiet for the little stretch to the group, though Yang and Blake kept chatting quietly. When they finally were walking up to everyone else, Ruby wasn't sure what they were supposed to do. Were they supposed to go to the professors? Was just Ruby supposed to go to the professors? She _was _the team leader. She was supposed to represent them. But that also felt kinda presup… presmup… pres-

"Ah, Team RWBY, hello," Professor Ozpin called out to them. The professors all changed their arrangement, making it look like at least _someone_ was supposed to walk up. Ruby did so, and figured if the rest of the team wanted to come too then they'd make that decision themselves.

They all came.

"Good morning, girls," Professor Ozpin greeted them again as they approached. "I hope you're all well rested?"

Ruby and Weiss both responded at the same time.

"Yes, sir."

"Yep!... sir." Ruby tacked the word on lamely at the end after she heard Weiss say it.

Professor Ozpin gave her one of those amused smiles that said 'I know everything that went through your head for the last hour and find it all very funny', then gestured to Professor Goodwitch.

"You, Team RWBY, will be escorting Professor Goodwitch to the relic that we have placed in the forest for you."

"Another relic hunt?" Yang asked, putting her hands on her hips.

"Yes," Professor Ozpin agreed, "but the purpose here is different. When we sent you for the relics last time, it was to serve as a retrieval mission. Go there, get the thing, come back. This time, the relic is simply marking a location for you to get to, and you have to get Professor Goodwitch there in one piece."

"Can't she wallop Grimm way better than we can?" Ruby asked, confused.

"I can, but I will not be fighting unless I absolutely must," Professor Goodwitch answered. "The purpose of this exercise is to function as an escort mission, one of the most common types of contracts you will find yourself doing as huntresses. Most of them are contracts issued by groups of civilians that are looking to go settle a new village somewhere nearby a larger city, and you must get them to their build site safely-and usually defend them until they can construct shelter and a few defenses of their own."

"Ah, and you're the placeholder for the civilians here?" Blake asked.

"Precisely. Now most of the time such missions are usually long-but well paying-affairs, and you'd have to trek for several days and deal with logistics like mapping and camping and food breaks and night watch shifts. However, those are things that we will ease you into. Your buildsite-or relic, in this case-is only five to eight hours away, and I'll give you some direction should you start getting lost."

"So this is, like, easy mode, huh?" Yang commented.

"Indeed," Professor Ozpin said. "Though this ordeal is mostly just to ease you into the life of a huntress, and for you to get used to functioning as a team, and for us to watch."

"Developing your teamwork is going to be far more difficult and rewarding than any escort or mapping or camping training we can give you," Professor Awesome added.

Ruby bounced a little bit. This was so exciting!

Although Professor Goodwitch was a bit of a grumpy-grumps. Professor Awesome or Oobelooble woulda been more fun to go hike around the woods with.

"Looks like we're just waiting on Team JNPR," Professor Ozpin said, scanning in the direction of the school.

"Your group," Professor Porkybutt snidely teased Professor Awesome.

"Yeah, I knooow," Professor Awesome sighed.

"It's your fault they're late, you know," Professor Goodwitch said with a grin.

"I-pfft! Wha-how? Listen here, Goodbeoch-"

"Nidas!" she cut him off. "There are children present!"

"I _said_ beoch!"

"I've said worse," Yang interjected flippantly.

Professor Goodwitch frowned at her. "That's not encouraging in the slightest."

Yang shrugged. "Blame my uncle."

Professor Awesome snort-laughed at that, but Professor Goodwitch's frown deepened. "I think we need to have a word with the old Qrow. And Tai, for that matter."

"Yang-uh!" Ruby whined. "Why are you getting _Dad_ in trouble?!"

Grinning ear to ear, Yang gave an evil little "hee hee heeee!"

It took Team JNPR a whole three more minutes to get to the airstrip, which felt like _forever_ 'cause Ruby really wanted to goooooo!

They ended up in a Chariot, Professor Goodwitch sitting next to them and Team KORL and Professor Oobledooble sitting across from them.

"You guys excited?" Ruby asked her team and Team KORL and the professors and the world all at once. She wasn't really sure who she was talking to. Really, she just wanted to say she was excited.

"Totes," Leona replied. "And it'll be super easy, won't it Ori?" She clapped her teammate Orianna on the shoulder as she said that, though it was a kinda awkward movement because they were all strapped and buckled in to the Chariot's seats, so complicated and intricate things like moving your arm were really difficult.

"Wait, is your semblance gonna work on the relic?" Ruby asked. If it did, that was super unfair!

… Maybe noncombat semblances didn't all suck.

Orianna nodded happily. "Professor Oobleck said the relic was the same kind of chesspiece our team picked up a couple weeks ago. So I just gotta focus on finding a black knight chesspiece and I should be able to walk us right to it!"

"Wait, what's your semblance?" Yang asked.

"You probably shouldn't have told them that, Bart," Professor Goodwitch chastised.

Professor Oobly shrugged and took a swig of his liquid adrenaline. "Whynot? Itseemed… appropriatetoletthemmakeuse ofsucha… unique ability."

"Read: useless," Orianna pouted.

"Notatall, mydear Orianna," Professor Oobylooby reassured her. "Yoursisasemblance thatcanbeoneof-ifnot, themost-useful inaHunt!"

"What's her semblance?!" Yang asked again.

"I'm really good at finding things," Orianna said dejectedly.

"There's more to it than that," Remus told her gently.

"It's… I call it 'Pathfinder'," Orianna expounded. "I can focus on a thing or a place or a person, and my semblance kind of… highlights a path to them? And the more familiar I am with the thing I'm pathfinding, the more of the path is revealed ahead of me. So, like, if I were to focus on… say, your toothbrush, Yang. I've never seen it before, but I'm sure you have one."

"Maaaaybe," Yang grinned.

"Oh, shut up," Weiss huffed, though she did the half eye roll that meant she was smiling.

"Anyway, my semblance would tell me…" Orianna closed her eyes, for a second, then opened them and looked around a bit. "Yep. It's showing me a path about two steps that way." She pointed at the raised ramp of the Chariot they'd entered on. "So not much, but if I kept following it, I'd eventually get to your toothbrush."

"Is it leading you off the ship?" Blake asked. "Like, asking you to jump out midair?"

Orianna shrugged. "Yes. It's drawing me the most direct line to my target. Sometimes I can force it to… recalculate, but it wouldn't be much good now since I'd have to get off this ship to get to her toothbrush no matter what."

Blake gave a thoughtful "hm" at that.

"But for, say, Remus," Orianna reached over and patted his hand, "I know exactly where he is from across the campus."

Remus blushed a bit and looked pretty much everywhere but other people's eyes.

"Not that you two are ever that far apart anyway," Karn teased, making Orianna blush too, diligently inspecting the straps of her seatbelt.

Oooooooooooooh!

That was pretty cute.

"That's pretty darn neat," Yang decided. "If Ruby had that semblance, no cookie in the world would be safe."

Ruby gasped. "Can you _do_ that?!"

That sounded amazing! A mental map to every cookie, everywhere? Whaaaaaaaaaat?!

"I can, actually," Orianna smiled. "When I was younger and living on the streets I used to use it to find food. Probably saved my life."

It got really quiet and Remus reached over to lightly hold Orianna's hand.

"Damn, I'm sorry," Yang broke the silence.

"Hm? Oh, no worries! It's behind me. And it made me who I am."

"And who you are is pretty cool," Remus said.

They looked at each other for a split second, then both immediately blushed again and went back to investigating their seatbelts.

"... Yes, they're always like this," Karn said, directing the comment to Yang, who laughed.

"Shut up!" Remus squeaked, stomping on the bigger boy's foot and eliciting exactly no reaction.

"You should keep at those leg presses," Karn teased. "I almost felt that one."

"Oh yeah?! I'll show you feeling-hngh!" Remus tried to turn in his seat to kick Karn, but couldn't really move well and just ended up flailing his feet. "Get over!... Here! Nyaaah!" He flopped back down with a huff.

Karn was chuckling, a deep bass noise that made him sound way older than he was. Orianna was turning more and more pink in the cheeks, but smiling like she was glad a boy felt the need to spaghetti noodle his legs for her. Leona had one fist raised to her lowered forehead like she was embarrassed, a very Weiss-y pose.

Ruby glanced over at the professors-and it was kinda hard to sneakily glance at Professor Goodwitch because she was right next to Ruby and quite a bit taller. She managed, though, and she got to see Professor Goodwitch smiling at Professor Obblybobbly as they listened to these antics, and Ruby again wandered what kind of memories the students made them revisit.

What if these professors had been on a team? That would be neat! Ruby knew that Professor Awesome was too young, but maybe Professors Goodwitch and Oobleybeck and Porkybutt had been on a team together!

But then… what would have happened to their fourth?

Remembering the stories from Professor Awesome about his team and Weiss' sister's… well, she could imagine something.

She looked over at her teammates on her left. These girls were awesome, and Ruby's friends! She really didn't want to… to lose them. What would she even do if she did? She sometimes felt like the only reason she had been able to make it out of bed after Mom… after Mom was because she was too young for everything to click, and now she had the benefit of all the memories being obscured by the haze of childhood.

But if she lost one of these three now…

…

Nope! Not something she wanted to think about. At all. Ever! And it would never ever ever happen, so thinking about it would be dumb anyway.

Her tummy lurched lightly and she realized they were descending.

They were here!

A couple minutes later and Ruby was bounding out of the ship to get to the launchpad that would send them flying into the forest, Yang close behind her. They were on the massive plateau in the not-quite-center of the Emerald Forest, vast expanses of green in every direction. To their south she could see the walls of Vale City, from here just a thin grey line jutting out of the horizon. To their… west? Yeah, west. To their west Ruby could just barely make out a smear of blue that was slightly darker than the sky. The sea. Not just the sea! Beacon Bay. Ruby knew that Beacon was, like, riiiiiiight there, but she couldn't really see it. Atmospheric something or other, right? Where things got blurry in the distance. There was a bit of a smudgey looking thing on the horizon line that might be Beacon Island...

"Over here, Team RWBY," Professor Goodwitch called out.

Ruby skipped over and got lined up on one of the launchpads Professor Goodwitch indicated. They were facing… north-northwest?

"Do you see that jagged outcropping about six miles that way?" the professor asked the team, prompting them all to look .

"Kiiinda?" Ruby said. It was kinda hard to see any distinguishing features considering the entire forest just looked like a flat mat of green.

"I see it," Blake answered.

"Where?" Yang asked, stepping closer to Blake and bowing her head a little to try to see from the same spot that Blake was.

Pointing, Blake said, "See that little triangle of… sandy-colored stone? The trees at the bottom are below the trees on the top, and there's just rock in between."

"... Ooooh, I see it!" Yang exclaimed. "Cool. Good eyes, Blake."

Blake smiled.

Ruby still didn't see iiii-

Oh!

"I see it too!"

Haha! Sniper eyes for the win.

… Wow, that was pretty far away.

"Your relic is right at the base of that peak," Professor Goodwitch explained.

Now that Ruby thought about it… it wasn't _really_ that far. "I could totally just run over there a grab it," she said.

"There's _no way_ your semblance can get you anywhere near that far," Weiss said.

"Wanna bet?" Ruby asked.

"No, I want to succeed. Please take this seriously."

… Oof. Ruby glanced at Professor Goodwitch, who was closely watching them both.

"... Yyyyou got it! That's me, super serious Ruby!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Well, I'm convinced!" Yang finally said. "Let's go!"

"One moment, the headmaster would like a word first," Professor Goodwitch tempered her.

Ruby turned to see that the other teams were also lined up on their spots, all facing in different directions along a north-northwest to east spread. Professor Ozpin was standing in the center of all the teams, and they all turned to face him as he cleared his throat.

"Alright, students. This is your first Hunt as an official team. Just so you are clear on how this will all work, you have an objective to reach out in the forest, and a professor to escort there. Your professors will defend themselves if they have to, but your goal is to not make them have to. There is no reward or penalty for speed, so focus on keeping your professor _and yourselves_ safe. The only time you should be mindful of is that at four pm the professor will have you turn around and head back, as we do not want you out in the forest after dark. That still gives you six hours to get to where you're going, so no rush. Communicate, work together, and protect your charge. You'll be graded both on how well you defend your professor and how well you function as a team.

"With that, good luck, students, and may your wits and weapons stay sharp."

The teams all looked at each other for a long stretch of time, as if everyone was nervous and waiting for someone else to go first."

… Screw that!

"Well, Team RWBY. Let's goooo!"

Ruby unholstered Crescent Rose and squatted low as its mechanisms clicked and whirred it into its fully expanded form. She pushed a tiny bit of aura into the pad to flick the aura switch and-

WHOOSH!

She was flying through the air, trees blurring beneath her as she rocketed into her first ever Hunt with her team.

* * *

**I am so sorry for the late update, everyone! I promise I'm still working on this story! I started my new job a couple weeks ago and have been kept very very busy. Also, my friends baited me into watching Fate, and that was time consuming. **

**I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Just some cute team conversations and set up for next chapter, mostly. As always, I welcome all reviews and look forward to hearing your thoughts! And also as always, if you review as a guest I can't respond! I swear I'm not ignoring you, it just won't let me reply!**

**Also, shout out to Sashu, one of my readers who is now a Beta reader! (Idk if I phrased that right.) Which is a thing. I didn't know that was a thing. I'm gonna need an alpha reader too so I can title all my chapters "I wAs In AlPhA!" **

**Yet another sidenote: I'm thinking of changing the title of this story. My very initial idea was to just write an expansive WhiteRose fic, but I think this has grown to be a lot more than that and the title doesn't really reflect that. But idk if that would throw you guys off, and also it's kinda hard to figure out a good alternate title. Something to discuss, if you'd like. **

**Anyway! Hope you enjoyed the read :3 **


	30. Hunting 3-2

Weiss hopped down from her glyph to the forest floor with nothing but a soft rustle. Above her, Ruby and Yang were both using their ridiculously loud firearms to stutter their fall momentum. She honestly wasn't even sure why Ruby was doing that when she could just use her semblance to slow and soften her landing. Probably just wanted to make as much noise as possible. Yang didn't really have many other options, though her getting smacked in the face with a tree at terminal velocity would really just power her up, right? And she could use a good knock on the head…

Blake… Weiss actually had no idea where Blake was. The girl had been standing between her and Yang when they launched, but Weiss had completely lost track of her once she'd fallen past the canopy.

As Ruby would say, "What a ninja! O: .O. :O !"

Or something like that.

A streak of yellow thudded down to the ground a few dozen feet away, a red one following soon after.

Weiss headed over to her teammates. She considered looking for Blake, but then decided against it. Blake could find them. She was probably stalking in the branches above them already.

Weiss glanced up super casually.

Nope. Not there.

She got to the other two, where Ruby was bouncing up and down like she had pogo sticks for legs. "...so much fun! Can we go back up to the top and do it again?"

Yang said something Weiss couldn't hear from where she was and placed a hand on top of her little sister's head, stilling the bounces.

"Probably," Ruby replied. Her eyes lit up when she spotted Weiss. "Hey, Weiss!" she chirped, zipping over to Weiss' side with a scattering of rose petals.

"Don't waste your aura, dolt," Weiss chastised her. They were on a Hunt now. They needed to ration their energy as best as possible.

"I!-yeah, okay," she sulked.

"You guys seen Blake?" Yang asked, walking over at a normal, rational, human pace.

Weiss shook her head. "Lost track of her when she got into the leaves."

"She can be pretty sneaky," a voice said behind Weiss.

All three girls jumped with a scream, turning to find Blake standing not even five feet away, a smug grin on her face.

"Ho-what?" Weiss sputtered.

"Did you roll a nat twenty on stealth, or did we all roll nat ones on our perception?" Ruby asked.

"I… don't know what that means, but if it means you're all a bunch of goobers, then yes," Blake answered.

"Your face is a goober," Ruby whispered to herself. She probably hadn't meant for anyone to hear, but Weiss definitely heard.

"Where's Professor Goodwitch?" Blake asked.

…

"Crap," Weiss muttered, looking around. This was their main job! Escort the professor to the relic! How were they supposed to escort someone they lost?!

"Hey, Professor?" Yang shouted through cupped hands.

"I'm here!" was the distant reply, coming from… which way was that? North? Northeast? Weiss usually judged cardinal directions based on the sun, the few occasions where she had to, but… she couldn't actually see the sun through the dense foliage right now.

Would the scroll mapping work this far from the CCT? She pulled her scroll out to check as they walked together towards the professor.

No luck. From what she remembered, the CCT was in the southern part of Vale City. Its range probably didn't extend very far past the northern walls.

They should put an extender tower on the plateau. That would be nice.

Professor Goodwitch was standing in a pretty unremarkable spot-trees around her, leaves and dirt underneath. Standard forest stuff. Her hands were crossed in front of her as she patiently waited for the team.

Poised and elegant. Weiss liked Professor Goodwitch.

"Team RWBY, reporting for duty!" Ruby announced them like a "goober", unfurling her weapon and jabbing the spike at the bottom into the ground for emphasis, like it was a flag or something.

Professor Goodwitch just quirked an eyebrow at her, which made Weiss smile.

"Are we ready to go?" the professor asked.

"Yeah!" Ruby replied for them. "Onward!" She started walking… somewhere. Weiss was pretty lost, though she's never admit that.

She also didn't trust that Ruby wasn't just as lost as she was.

"Ruby?" she called out, making the girl stop and turn. "Are you sure you're going the right way?"

"Uh…" Ruby looked around herself a bit, taking in… well, trees and leaves and dirt, as that's all there was.

Weiss really hated the wilderness.

"Noooooot… reallyyyy…" Ruby admitted.

Weiss hung her head with a sigh. This was an amusing mirror to their last time together in this forest.

"Can you point us in the right direction?" Yang asked the professor.

"No need," Blake cut in. She started walking in a direction about sixty degrees off from the way Ruby had gone. "It's this way."

"A-are you sure?" Weiss asked.

"I have a pretty good sense of direction," Blake called back.

Ruby skipped up to Yang and Weiss as they followed, the Professor close behind. "I'm confused. Are you a rogue or a ranger?!"

Blake looked over her shoulder briefly to frown at her. "What?"

"The Dungeons and Duststorms stuff we talked about, remember?" Ruby explained like it should be obvious. "You're all stealthy like a rogue, but you're also being all tracker-y like a ranger! And you can't be the ranger 'cause _I'm_ the ranger!"

Weiss considered telling Ruby to be quiet, but… she was quickly learning there wasn't much point. This was who Ruby was. She'd be sad and quiet for a little while and then some other nonsense would pop in her head and she'd blurt it out and they'd be back here again anyway.

Also, a sad Ruby was a truly terrible thing to befold.

"Then be better at tracking?" Blake suggested.

Ruby scrunched her nose. "I… I'm a combat ranger!"

"So a fighter?" Yang grinned.

"... Yeah, I guess so," Ruby sighed. "Fighters are boring though," she added with a pout.

Yang pulled her sister over and ruffled her hair. "Yeah, but when _you_ do it you use super speed and rose petals and mega death scythes, which is super _not_ boring."

Alright, this was going on a little too long. These buffoons needed to be steered back on track.

"Guys, focus," Weiss demanded. "Shouldn't we be in a formation or... something? In case we're attacked?"

They all stopped and looked at each other.

"Uhhh, sure!" Ruby chirped. "Good thinking, Weiss! Uhhhh… Yes, a formation."

It was very clear she stalling as she tried to figure out what to do, made extra evident by the way she was glancing at each of her teammates in turn.

"Hm. Blake, you're up front. Lead the way and scout. Yang, you follow her, but don't get too far from the professor. Wwwwweiss? Um… Stay with the professor? I'll run around the flanks and make sure we don't get jumped? Maybe join you guys for a lil' bit?" She looked at Professor Goodwitch as she finished. "Does that sound good?"

The professor shrugged. "I'm merely here to observe. Any comments and critiques I have I will share at the conclusion of the Hunt."

Ruby puffed her lower lip out a bit, something Weiss understood. What was the point of having someone as skilled and experienced as the professor here with them if she wasn't going to give some guidance? The… openness of all this made Weiss nervous. Too many decisions to make and she had no idea what the right answers were.

"I _will_ say," the professor added, "that whatever your plan, make sure it plays to the strengths of each of your team members."

Ruby looked around at them. "I think it does, right? Blake knows where we're going and seems to have pretty good eyesight to spot trouble, Yang in the middle to jump in and back up either Blake or Weiss, and Weiss as escort because she's got the best defense and zone control, and can stall for us all to get to her if there's trouble?"

"And then you can get to any of us really fast," Yang added, nodding slowly. "Sounds good."

"Don't waste too much of your aura semblancing around, Ruby," Weiss reminded her.

Ruby nodded a bit. "Yeah. I'll stay close. Try to keep at least two of you in sight at all times?"

"This seems like a good plan," Blake approved. She turned to Yang. "Give me a shout if I'm getting too far ahead for you to follow."

"Mkay. Pretty sure I can keep up with you though," Yang said, her competitive side poking out.

Blake shook her head. "It's not about that. I think Professor Goodwitch needs to be the one that sets the pace. Remember, she's a stand-in for a bunch of civilians, and we can't expect them to try to keep up with _us_ if we're going fast."

Out of the corner of her eye, Weiss saw the professor nod approvingly.

"So you need to make sure you stay close enough to her and Weiss," Blake finished. "But I probably won't see them, so just let me know if I need to slow down."

Yang nodded quickly. "Yeah. Yeah yeah, makes sense. 'Kay, ya'll ready to go?"

They all looked at each other, then Ruby nodded. "Break!"

The group split up, which made Weiss uncomfortable. She didn't like the idea of getting jumped by Grimm without anyone else around. Not that she couldn't take care of herself! She absolutely could! But… Grimm were pretty… scary.

No, not scary. That made Weiss sound weak. Mildly alarming? That was better. No reason for her, Weiss Schnee, to be _scared_.

Blake and Ruby both vanished rather quickly, Blake using her physics defying ribbon-scythe-whatever to whip through the trees, and Ruby jogged off to the right a bit and then zipped through the trunks and branches with her semblance until she was a good sixty feet away. Still visible, though only from her cape, really.

Yang took her time, slowly jogging after Blake to put some distance between her and Weiss and the professor, who were walking. Before getting too far, she turned and called back to Weiss, "Gimme a shout if you lose track of me, 'kay?"

Weiss nodded. Yang was easy to spot with her mane that looked like a solar flare, so Weiss would really only lose her if she got too far ahead.

It was nice to have a defined role now, an assignment with clear framing. 'Follow Yang and protect the Professor' was straightforward, and having that responsibility meant that she wasn't in Decision Limbo trying to figure out what to do and what was the best course of action.

She and the professor walked in silence for a while, Weiss following the spot of yellow in the trees and feeling very nervous of scrutiny. She could just imagine Professor Goodwitch behind her watching her every movement and calculating how many tiny things she was doing wrong.

It made Weiss fidgety. She'd been keeping her arms at her sides, then started swinging them lightly as she walked, then stopped because that felt ridiculous. She clasped her hands in front of her, then decided that felt too casual and unprepared, so she placed her left hand on the pommel of her sword and her right… what was she supposed to do with her right hand? She placed it on her hip. No. She kept it stiff at her side. No. She hooked her thumb through her belt and let her arm hang lightly. Maybe? It felt awkward, but at least it was better than the other options.

As she was looking down at her hand on her belt, she noticed her feet and her awkward gait. She was putting one foot directly in front of the other and swinging her hips like she was walking on a runway. Granted, that was how she'd been _taught_ to walk, but she very much doubted when her mother had coached her in this that she'd been expecting Weiss to use it in the middle of a forest littered with feral packs of monsters.

She started trying to walk where her feet went straight forward instead of crossing inward, but that felt so unnatural to her now. And should she bend her knees? Be more… springy, so she could jump at a moment's notice?

… Okay, nope. Walking with bent knees felt weird as hell. Especially in high heeled combat boots. She might as well be waddling.

Also, was her hair okay? She'd fixed it up this morning and put in her ponytail crown and made sure everything lined up perfectly, but she _had_ just plummeted over six hundred feet from the top of a cliff to the forest floor. She reached up to pat her head and feel her-yep. Loose strands all over the place

She sighed.

She could fix it, but was she supposed to with Professor Goodwitch right there? She might think that Weiss was being petty and worrying about the wrong things.

She also might be thinking that Weiss' hair looked horrible.

Weiss hated making decisions. How was she supposed to weigh the pros and cons here when she wasn't even sure what the professor was thinking? There was no foundation with which to f-

The world started blurring, and her head felt as though she were on a rollercoaster while she felt a tug across the top of her foot.

'_I tripped,'_ she managed to realize right before she hit the ground with a loud "Oof!"

She launched herself to her feet with glyphs and hurried to dust the dirt and dead leaves off the front of her clothing. Her first feeling was one of utter embarrassment at having just faceplanted in front of her professor, the second a not-so-mild annoyance that her outfit was now so dirty. It would definitely need to be drycleaned now.

She cleared her throat and turned her head to address the professor-though she didn't turn all the way around to look at her, afraid of a look of condescending judgement. "S-sorry. That root… snuck up on me."

The professor chuckled, which gave Weiss enough of a feeling of security to turn around, though the professor had kept moving and was now walking past her. "Perhaps it would be better to focus on your surroundings rather than on your hair, Miss Schnee."

Weiss could feel her cheeks going Ruby red. "S-sorry," she stammered again, picking up her pace so she could get back to her place in front of the professor.

Her heart was hammering from embarrassment, and it took a moment for her in her frazzled state to collect her thoughts enough to remember what she should be doing. She panicked for a moment when she couldn't spot Yang, but then a flash of yellow peeped through the dense foliage and she calmed a bit, hurrying in that direction.

Yang was getting a little far… Almost a hundred feet away, if Weiss had to ballpark a guess.

"Yang," she tried calling out, though her voice came out a little hoarse and raspy. She wasn't used to yelling.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and tried again. "Yang!"

Up ahead, Yang stopped and turned. "Yeah?!" came the shouted reply, muffled from bouncing through the trees.

"Slow down a bit!" Weiss called out. Yang probably hadn't meant to, but she was moving a bit faster than they were, and it was probably better to have Yang slow down than it was to have the professor-pseudo-cilivian-caravan speed up.

"'Kay!" Yang called back before turning. Weiss could make out her calling after Blake, but couldn't make out the words now that Yang was facing away from her.

A couple more minutes of quiet trekking passed. A couple minutes for Weiss to be reminded how much she despised nature.

Okay, that wasn't fair. Nature was nice and beautiful. From a distance. But when you were in it, it was just annoying. There wasn't a single section of flat ground, every step sounded like an earthquake from all the branches and leaves underfoot, and there were bugs constantly buzzing about. They couldn't do anything to Weiss through her aura, of course, but their very presence made her skin crawl.

Bugs are gross.

If this is what being a huntress was… well, Weiss wasn't having second thoughts, but she definitely had reservations about these awful escort missions. Weren't there huntsman contracts that were something like "hang out in this fancy hotel suite and protect a foreign dignitary" or something? She knew her father had a pair of huntsman that he often hired as bodyguards, either for himself or for high priority shipments, though she was fairly certain they'd died in that train hijacking a year ago when it derailed and crashed into a mountainside.

More huntsmen that died before their time.

It made Weiss sad to think about, and also a bit scared for her own future. If the time ever came for her to face her end on the battlefield, could she meet it bravely? Death terrified her. There was so much she wanted and needed to do, to accomplish, that she wouldn't be able to if she just died out in the woods in the middle of nowhere to some nameless monster. Could she be brave to the end when she was already scar-mildly alarmed-of Grimm when there weren't even any around? She hoped so. A coward's death wouldn't be very fitting for a Schn-

"Hey, Weiss!"

Weiss jumped at Ruby's voice. The little captain was standing off to Weiss' left, a little ahead of her.

"Yes, Ruby?" she replied, a now automatic response, really.

"You doin' okay?"

Weiss tried a smile. "Doing great. How are you and the others?"

Ruby rocked on the balls of her feet, betraying her excitement.

'_At least someone's enjoying being out here,'_ Weiss thought to herself.

"Oh, you know. Pretty deece," Ruby answered. "How 'bout you, Professor? You feelin' all safe and secure and… stuff?"

Professor Goodwitch nodded. "I am."

Ruby pumped a fist. "Yisss!" She turned back to Weiss. "Blake says she hears running water up ahead. If there's a river or stream or whatever and it's running the right way then we can stay together a bit more and follow it."

Weiss nodded. "Okay. How far?"

"Dunno," Ruby shrugged. "She said maybe half a mile-ish? She said it's hard to judge without knowing how fast the water's going."

"How on Remnant can she hear something like that from half a mile away?" Weiss wondered, completely dumbfounded.

Ruby smiled and gave her jazz hands, saying, "Ninjaaaa!"

Weiss, of course, had to roll her eyes at that, but that just made Ruby smile wider. "See you guys up there!" she chirped before speeding off in a blur of petals.

"Don't!..." Weiss started, but Ruby was already gone. "... waste your aura," she finished grumbling to herself, resuming the hike after Yang's distant figure.

Sure enough, a little more than fifteen minutes later, Weiss and Professor Goodwitch caught up to the other three, who were stopped at a wide, shallow little stream.

About ten to fifteen feet wide, it ran from the northeast to west, towards the ocean. There was a good five to ten feet of riverbank on either side of it, meaning there was no oppressive shadow of trees blocking out the sky. At its deepest it was _maybe_ knee deep, and most of it was only a little bit past ankle deep. It was shallow enough that there weren't any fish in it at all. It was making happy babbling brook noises that made the tension in Weiss' shoulders relax.

Okay, if they spent time in nature like this, maybe that wouldn't be too bad.

It wasn't really running the right way, but… damn, did Weiss like not having the gloom of the forest above and around her.

The others were clearly discussing the issue as they approached.

"... would really like to stay out in the open like this," Yang was saying.

"I _know_, Yang," Blake sighed. "But I'm not a hundred percent confident I can keep track of where we're trying to go if we follow this and angle off too much."

Ruby, for her part, was kicking splashes of water at the edge of the stream, and from the way her boots weren't wet Weiss assumed she was concentrating on extending her aura around them.

She looked up when she heard Weiss and the professor crunching up to them, though.

"Hey, Weiss! So this is the river." She spread her hands out to indicate the water behind her.

"Think it's more of a stream," Yang said, a teasing edge to her tone and a playful smile on her lips as she tapped her chin with a finger.

"_Ugh_," Blake huffed. "I was just having a discussion with myself, okay? I wasn't trying to be a grammar Grimm!"

"Nonono, it's _definitely_ a brook," Yang continued, her grin only growing wider.

"I'll plant your stupid face in this brook," Blake muttered, crossing her arms together and pouting at the ground. The reaction just made Yang laugh and pull the girl in to her side.

"I'm just teasin' ya, goof. I thought it was adorkable."

Blake deepened her pout.

"Anyway, this is the river/stream/brook!" Ruby said, once again acting like Weiss and the river needed introduction. "Blake's afraid that if we follow it she won't be able to keep track of where the cliff we're going to is, though."

"I'm sorry!" Blake blurted, voice raised. "I'm doing the best I can!"

"Heyyy-" Ruby started.

"Ssshhh," Yang said soothingly, giving Blake a squeeze. "Nobody's mad at you, babe. We're just trying to figure out what to do."

"... okay," Blake mumbled, clearly not convinced that nobody was mad at her.

Weiss knew that what was going on, mostly because she did this herself all the time. Blake was just mad at herself and assumed everyone else was too. And it was something Weiss was only able to recognize she was doing well in hindsight.

She felt for Blake, though she still wanted to slap the girl in the face for that comment this morning. It was a weird combination of feelings.

"... So yeah, that's where we're at," Ruby said.

Weiss nodded slowly. "What's your confidence level you can keep track of where we're going, Blake?"

"Ninety-nine point nine if we just keep going the way we are," she answered. "But if we follow this river… it's at an angle, which makes things a little harder, and it's windy, which makes things a _lot_ harder. Depending on how much it turns, I'm only, like… forty to sixty percent confident."

Weiss nodded again. She liked having numbers to work with.

"Not great," she surmised.

"Sorry," Blake told the ground.

Weiss quickly shook her head. "No, it's okay. I just… I think the answer's pretty clear, right?"

From Ruby's groan, it was pretty clear. "But I like the sky being bluuuuue!" she whined.

"Believe me, I do too," Weiss said. "But we have to make sure we stay on target. I feel like wandering around and getting lost is the most surefire way to make sure we fail this test."

And failing was simply not acceptable. Weiss would stomach any number of hours of dreary forest lighting if it meant they wouldn't fail.

"The professor wouldn't let us get _that_ lost…" Yang argued, sounding unconvinced herself as she turned to Professor Goodwitch to ask, "... would you?"

The professor was watching them critically and stoically from a few feet away. "I would not let it get to the point that we would be unable to make it to the relic in time, but this decision is a crucial one and your grade would change accordingly if I needed to help you because of it."

"Sooooooo I guess we're going straight," Yang sighed. "Straight's the most boring direction there is." She grinned up at the rest of them, but everyone's overall dejection meant nobody reacted to her joke and she went back to hanging her head.

"How do we know the professor wouldn't get lost too?" Blake grumbled to herself.

"Pffft, professors don't get lost!" Ruby laughed. "... Right?"

Professor Goodwitch smiled lightly and tapped the side of her leg with a fingernail, which made a dull *thunk* sound that Weiss suspected was a scroll strapped to her thigh tucked underneath her blouse. "I have a way to cheat," she answered simply.

"How come the teachers get to cheat?!" Yang exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. "That's just hypocritical and unfair!"

"There is a difference between having a geocode for a relic and leaning across your partner to sneak glances at Miss Schnees answers during a pop quiz, Miss Xiao Long."

The corners of Yang's lips twerked up in an attempt to not laugh, and her cheeks turned a guilty red. "I was just double checking her spelling, I swear!"

"Ha! Like I need _you_ to spell check _me_," Weiss joked. "Now, shall we go?" She gestured across the river, back into the shadows of the trees.

"I don't waaaaaannaaa," Ruby whined.

"None of us do, Ruby," Weiss huffed impatiently.

"I'sss gotta be done, Cap," Yang said begrudgingly, reaching up to lightly ruffle Ruby's hair.

Ruby groaned again. "Fiiiiine," she sighed, crossing the shallow stream, kicking her feet while she walked to make splashes like a little brat. The rest followed behind her.

"Same forma-" Weiss started to ask.

"Sssh!" Blake hissed, ducking down and darting a few feet to hide behind the nearest tree.

Immediately, the remaining three of them all went on alert. Weiss pulled out her sword, staying by the professor because that was the job she was assigned, and entered her fighting stance-head up, shoulders back, left foot forward-while Yang pumped the knuckle guards of her gauntlets out and rushed to Blake's side and Ruby unholstered and unfurled her massive scythe.

Weiss still had no idea how Ruby carried that thing so easily, much less swung it.

"What is it?" Yang asked in a low voice.

"Growling," Blake answered. "It's hard to make out over the water. I can't tell what it is. Beowolf or Ursai, maybe?"

"Are you sure it's Grimm?" Weiss asked, creeping forward a smidge so she could keep her voice low and still be heard by the two ahead of her. "This forest has just standard wolves and jungle cats and stuff too."

Blake frowned in concentration, trying to listen harder. She reached a hand up, then grimaced and lowered it, causing Yang to roll her eyes.

"... hear bet… took it off," Yang whispered to her, quietly enough that Weiss couldn't make out most of the words.

Blake glared at her and didn't respond.

"I'm not sure," she said after a moment, addressing Weiss' question rather than Yang. "I don't know their sounds enough to be able to pick any differences out. Should I go scout?"

"Where are they?" Ruby asked.

Blake pointed, sweeping a finger about thirty degrees across a northeastern direction. "Not sure how far. Maybe, like… half a windball field?"

Seventy five feet. Not that far. A distance that would take a few seconds for Beowolves to be able to barrel down on them, assuming they didn't smack themselves into trees along the way.

Weiss shivered and was glad everyone was too busy staring into the trees to notice.

"Do you think they know we're here?" Yang asked.

Blake shrugged. "Dunno. They're growling. Do Grimm just passively growl?"

"Wouldn't be surprised," Yang muttered back with a grin. "They seem like the type."

"Alright. Blake scouts, I'll go with her for backup," Ruby declared.

"I'm not su-" Blake started to protest.

"I'm almost silent when I use my semblance. We'll be fine. Yang, Weiss, stay with the professor. If they spot us, we lead them back here to fight them out in the open."

"If there are a lot of them, shouldn't we pick them off in the trees?" Blake asked. "We could get swarmed out here."

Weiss' heart hammered as a mental image of her getting piled on by Beowolves flashed through her head.

"Yang and I both fight better with space to move, and Weiss would probably prefer to not have trees blocking her casting."

Ruby looked to Weiss for confirmation and Weiss nodded, more out of expectation than anything else. She honestly hadn't given that subject much thought. A quick analysis told her Ruby was probably right, though.

"And they'd probably come out of the treeline staggered," Ruby finished. "Kill 'em as they emerge, they won't be able to swarm anything. If you want, you can stay on the edge of the forest and pick them off as they rush out to us."

Blake frowned, then nodded. "'Kay. We should try to just be sneaky, though. It's entirely possible we can just walk around them, too."

"I don't like the idea of leaving Grimm behind us," Weiss worried.

"Same," Yang agreed. "Regardless of how we decide to do it, we should take them out. Now get going you two. Hurry up and bring me some Ursai to hit. My trigger knuckles are getting itchy."

"Trigger knuckles?" Weiss repeated.

Yang winked at her. "Yep! They're the triggers for deez guns!" She flexed her biceps like a moron.

"That analogy doesn't even line up," Weiss stated flatly.

Yang's arms slumped to her sides and she gave Weiss a deadpan look. "Shudup! Or it'll be yer nose that doesn't line up!" She pointed a finger at the sky as she said the last part, making it a mighty declaration of nonsense.

Weiss blinked at her.

Yang blinked back.

"Yeah, get going you two," Weiss said. "I wouldn't mind stabbing something too, and if you don't hurry I suppose it'll have to be Yang."

"Hey!" Yang protested. "You could stab the professor!"

They all turned to look at Professor Goodwitch who was watching them from the water's edge, arm's cross, face impassive.

"No."

The team turned back to each other.

"Time to go, Blake!" Ruby chirped, sounding only _slightly_ nervous.

Ruby zipped up and into the branches, leaving a trail of petals for Blake to follow.

In a blink and a half, they were gone. A moment of silence passed before Weiss voiced one of her two biggest concerns.

"You think Ruby can be quiet enough to qualify as sneaky?"

Yang huffed a laugh. "Can, as in 'is she physically capable'? Sure, absolutely. Whether or not she will, though…"

Weiss rolled her eyes. So they were definitely going to be getting into a fight. That was the second of Weiss' biggest concerns. She knew, rationally, that she'd be fine. She was trained, ready, and equipped to deal with Grimm. Plus she had a team, and Ruby and Yang were both absolute monsters when it came to dealing with actual monsters. And Professor Goodwitch was here to help them if they came into any real danger.

Yet still, she was nervous.

"Hey, Professor Useless Civilian, should you back up to the other side of the river?" Yang suddenly called out.

Professor Goodwitch's face kept the same permanently unamused and unimpressed expression as always. "I don't know, Professional Huntress. I am just a useless civilian. I hired you to get me through the forest. Tell me what to do."

Yang gave the professor an equally dead expression and responded in an equally dead tone, "Yes, Professor Useless Civilian. Please back up to the trees on the other side of the river until the way is safe."

The professor gave Yang one long, slow blink, then turned to march back across the water to the opposite treeline.

It was a good call. Weiss mentally kicked herself for not thinking of it herself.

She'd always been terrible with open-ended situations. She liked having options laid out in front of her to choose from. It's why she loved multiple choice tests and hated essays unless they had a very specific prompt. And out here it seemed they were making all the calls on their own, no prompts or explicitly laid out choices.

It was awful. And Weiss was awful at it.

Which was absolutely unacceptable! She was Weiss Schnee, damn it! She was supposed to be good at everything!

'_I bet Winter didn't have these issues when she started,' _Weiss thought to herself bitterly.

"Yo, Weissicle."

"Hm? What?" Weiss looked up to Yang.

"You should back up a bit too. If they come charging out, I'll smack some faces and you can magic missile them from back there."

Weiss nodded numbly and turned, crossing the river. She should have thought of that too.

She extended her aura past her feet again and the water splashed across and over her high-heeled combat boots. It was kind of surreal to see her feet in water but not feeling them getting wet. Auras made things weird. She was almost tempted to pull her aura back to her skin just to make the weirdness stop, but then remembered that wet shoes _suck_.

She took up a position on the far bank of the river between Yang and Professor Goodwitch, getting back into her fighting stance and trying to clear her head. Her sword fighting instructor, Cerio Phorell, the First Sword of Atlas, had told her to empty her mind and think about nothing, which had always frustrated Weiss. Thinking about nothing _was_ thinking about something, and not thinking at all-which was probably what he'd meant-wasn't possible!

'_Well, maybe Yang could pull it off,'_ she thought jokingly to herself. '_Or Ruby when there are cookies nearby. No thought there, just pure instinct.'_

She smiled at her own joke. She knew that was dumb, but hey! It was funny.

A loud *_CRACK!_* startled her out of her musings.

That would be Ruby's rifle.

It was starting.

"Get ready!" Yang called back to Weiss as she crouched low.

With a shuddering inhale, Weiss tried what she could to prepare for real life monsters to come charging at her.

There were two more loud cracks from Ruby's weapon, interspersed with quick sprees of light pops that must be Blake's machine pistol. It sounded like popcorn compared to Crescent Rose.

Weiss could now see flashes of movement in the trees, though the difference in lighting meant the forest shadows made the shapes and colors indistinguishable. There was the unmistakable noise of Ruby converting her weapon into scythe form, then a loud *_schink!*_

A rumbling filled the air and one of the trees only twentyish feet from the edge of the riverbank toppled to the forest floor with a series of loud crashes.

Ruby.

Weiss was actually grateful this once for Ruby making so much noise, though, as it informed her where she should be looking.

Sure enough, a couple seconds later, Ruby came racing out of the forest-still moving pretty darn fast even without her semblance-her scythe's blade low and curving up behind her as she ran holding the weapon with the staff part running diagonal across her back.

An uncharacteristic thought of '_She looks pretty cool'_ ran through Weiss' head for the briefest instant.

As Ruby ran by her, Yang dashed forward, driving her fist into the snout of a Beowolf that Weiss hadn't noticed behind Ruby until Yang let loose her shotgun in its face.

Right before she got to the edge of the river, Ruby dug the blade of her scythe into the ground and swung to a stop, her feet kicking both kicking up while she twisted in mid air and landed with her feet planted-now facing the oncoming Beowolves-and immediately shot again as soon as her feet touched ground.

Weiss tracked the bullet as it left the barrel of Crescent Rose and sped into the skull of another Beowolf that had just reached the treeline.

Okay, that was pretty impressive.

From inside the forest came the continued sound of Gambol Shroud, and from the direction it was coming from it appeared that Blake was hoping through higher branches and raining bullets down to the forest floor below her.

"How many?!" Weiss shouted.

"Over a dozen Beowolves and at least three Ursai!" Ruby shouted back. "Might be more of both! They were in a cave up ahead and we couldn't see into it!"

So it was either a reasonable amount for them to handle-fifteen minor Grimm between four huntresses wasn't too bad-or potentially a lot more.

"They're coming!" Yang yelled, making Weiss infer that those two leading Beowolves had just been a 'first wave'. Yang's head darted from side to side as she took in attackers that Weiss still couldn't see. "They're too spread out! I can't catch them all!"

As she finished shouting that, five Beowolves all came tearing out from different points in the-oh. Four Beowolves, as one appeared to get clotheslined by a nearly invisible ribbon and collapse wheezing onto the ground. A shadow pounced on it that was quickly replaced with Blake, who delivered one swift stab into its ear. When she flicked her blade out, a spray of black blood followed, and the body began to crumple into gore that evaporated into black dust as Blake jumped back into the trees.

The whole thing took two seconds.

The other four Beowolves kept rushing forward, and two of them were close enough together that Yang was able run up and trap one in a headlock and trip the other. The other two rushed towards Ruby, who shot one as it leapt at her.

The fourth… Weiss realized that Ruby hadn't seen it and knew she should jump forward to help. But how? A single Beowolf wasn't worth using a Dust vial on. She could throw a glyph in its face to block it, but that was really just stalling and making Ruby deal with it herself later, not solving the problem. She could launch herself forward and stab it. That would take care of-

She didn't reach a decision in time, and the Beowolf jumped at Ruby from behind.

"RUBY!" Weiss shouted, but it ended up being pointless.

Ruby must have heard the thing behind her, because as its shadow fell on top of her she was ready. She blurred to the side and up as a storm of petals, then, as the Beowolf landed where she'd been crouched, she rematerialized, spinning around with her scythe held behind her and across her back. "Guillotine!" she yelled as she spun quickly in the air and landed right next to the monster, the blade of Crescent Rose swinging down right onto the Beowolf's neck.

Needless to say, it began the slow, gross process of Grimm decomposition a moment later.

Ruby straightened up and turned to Weiss. "All good!" she smiled, flashing a thumbs up.

Weiss returned a weak thumbs up of her own.

She was absolutely useless. She needed to shake off this paralysis.

She rushed up to Ruby's side as the girl put a bullet in the head of the Beowolf Yang had in a headlock. The other one Yang had been brawling with was currently dissolving a couple dozen feet away. Weiss wasn't sure what had happened there, though the simple answer of 'Yang' was more than enough for her.

"What should I do?" she asked Ruby. She'd been too off-kilter trying to deal with her nerves to formulate a plan, and Weiss _needed _a plan.

Now that she was closer, she could see that there were many more Beowolves and two dark, hulking shapes that must be Ursai heading towards them. Luckily, Blake's distraction swinging through the trees was making most of them stop their headlong charge towards the rest of them as they tried to chase her back and forth instead. If not for the fact that they were killer monsters and the absolute enemy of mankind, it would actually be quite comical.

Ruby thought for a moment, then pointed into the left side of the forest. "Can you make a big icewall that way? We want them funneling into Yang and running into each other."

"Absolutely." Having something to do-something she was incredibly good at, too, was a relief to Weiss. She'd make the best damn ice wall the Emerald Forest had ever seen.

She poured a huge amount of aura into her sword and slashed upward, a massive spear of ice extending past the blade and crashing through the trees, ten feet high and twenty, thirty, forty feet into long, practically halving the battlefield. There was a yelp that told Weiss she'd even hit an evil death wolf.

Ruby let out a happy giggle. "Sweet! I'd like to see a zombie dragon get through that!"

"What?"

"Wow, thanks for that, Ruby," Yang shouted back. "Now I'm thinking about season eight!"

Ruby scratched her head sheepishly. "Heh. Sorry…"

From the upper branches of the forest, Blake yelled, "Less pop culture references, more fighting!"

Yang took a step forward and punched two shotgun shells at an approaching Beowolf, but most of the pellets hit its bone plating. Not having the stopping power of Ruby's ridiculously powerful rifle, they weren't enough to get through. It jumped at Yang, who crouched low ready to take the hit, but then Blake's blade, in the weird hooked kama/scythe mode, flew out from behind the thing and wrapped around its neck, tugging it back. It yelped as its momentum was halted and, as it flailed in the air, Yang jumped forward and punched it in the chest, releasing another shotgun blast for good measure.

That one did the trick.

Another Beowolf slammed into Yang from the side and she was knocked into a tree trunk with a grunt. It lunged forward, jaws wide to bite, but Yang answered by punching its snout down into the dirt as soon as it was close enough. She then grabbed it by the scruff of its neck as it floundered, dazed, and with one hand tossed it up into the air.

A resounding crack at Weiss' side announced Ruby putting a bullet through its brain.

Eager to help, Weiss focused on their left side, looking for enemies next to her wall. There was an Ursa lumbering at them quickly along side it, and a substantial amount of Weiss' aura was still thrumming through the ice for her to influence. She reached a hand out, then snatched it back, drawing her fingers in, and the ice obeyed. Shards split off from the top edges of the wall near the Ursa and speared into its side, two dozen blades of ice that buried themselves six to eight inches into its hide, several into the sides of its face. It let out a roar as it rocked from the impact, then stumbled and fell onto its non-impaled side. It didn't start dissolving, but neither was it getting up.

Her eyes catching a line of three more Beowolves that were getting a little too close to Yang, Weiss clicked to a new Dust cannister and waved her sword like a wand, letting out three separate missiles of ice that she directed through the trees, one toward each wolf. Concentrating on moving three separate projectiles had been damn near impossible for her, once, but now she was able to manage quite handily. She only really started struggling at four.

The stars of ice wisped through and around the trees, and two collided spot on with their targets. On contact, the little motes exploded into what really did look like stars of ice, the "points" of them being blades two to three feet long that skewered the Beowolves and the ground and trees around them, anchoring them in place.

The third star didn't quite hit the mark. It ran into a root that Weiss wasn't able to see from where she was standing, and it detonated a few feet in front of its target. The Beowolf didn't quite react in time, though, trying to turn itself but unable to stop its momentum. It let out a pained bark as ice slashed along its flanks and it bounced on the ground with a thud. To finish it off, Weiss broke off points of the "star" to impale it as it struggled to its feet, when a shadow suddenly appeared next to it she tried to throw them to the side in a panic. The shadow became Blake, and Blake lashed out with one quick, precise slice to the Beowolf's neck as shards of ice shattered into one of her calves and the trunk next to her.

Another pile of black, dissolving goo.

The ice had knocked her foot back and made her lose her balance a bit, and after taking a second to regain it, Blake looked up and, after a moment of searching, at Weiss, who waved at her. "Sorry!" Weiss called out. She was going to explain what happened, how she hadn't been expecting Blake to show up there, but Blake just shook her head and jumped away.

A loud roar to her right made Weiss turn to find Yang practically wrestling with another of the Ursa. It swiped a paw at her, which she blocked with both hands, then she put a jab-jab-punch combo into its head, the punch accompanied with a shotgun blast.

Ursa were tough assholes, though, and it just got angrier as one of its eyes was shredded, roaring even louder and charging forward to try to trample over Yang.

Yang reacted smartly though, placing a hand on the creature's snout and kicking her legs up underneath her, so she just got carried forward with its movement. She pushed off of it and sailed through the air for a few fe-

She was going to hit a tree.

Instinctively, Weiss reached out and summoned a white glyph, angled to where Yang's feet would catch it well, right in the girl's path. A split second later she doubted the decision-after all, Yang would be fine with hitting the tree. The impact would probably just charge up her semblance for a big attack on the killer bear.

Maybe that had even been her plan. Maybe Weiss shouldn't have interfered.

When Yang let out a noise of surprise as she landed on the glyph, Weiss' doubts redoubled. But then Yang let out a whoop and jumped back toward the Ursa, the effect of the glyph propelling her much higher and farther than normal-evidently higher and farther than she'd been expecting, too.

She flew over the Ursa, which seemed to have been her intention, but when she reached down to try to grab onto the fur on its back she was too high, and she let out a dismayed "Aaagh!" as she sailed past.

Trying to help fix it, Weiss summoned another glyph in the girls path, this one directly perpendicular to the Ursa. Yang noticed this one and pressed her feet together, flying into the glyph and bending her knees to take the momentum, springing up to jump again. This time, she rocketed straight into the Ursa's back, arms out wide in a _literal_ bear hug tackle, knocking the monster onto its stomach.

A loud growl from behind her forced Weiss to turn around, though it was already too late. There was a Beowolf right on top of her, its giant form towering two feet above her even while it was on all fours. It bit down at her, its massive fangs chomping around her left shoulder.

Weiss was fine. Her aura held, the teeth feeling like nothing more than a sharp pressure, a bunch of pencils poking her through a pillow. But she couldn't help it:

She shrieked.

Reflexively, she stabbed upward with Myrtenaster, piercing through its throat and poking out the other side, a spray of disgusting black blood spurting from the wound and dousing her sword and hand. Even through her aura she could tell it felt slimy and abnormally warm.

It didn't even register to her terrified, grossed-out brain that she'd killed the thing until it started dissolving-RIGHT ON TOP OF HER!

Fur and hide began sloughing off of it with wet squelchy sounds that made Weiss want to vomit, bits of its face falling and slapping across her chest and leg. And the _smell_. Like it had already been dead and rotting for a week.

She let out another, though quite different, shriek and jumped away, trying to shake off the gunky gore and her entire feeling of _BLEGH_.

"Weiss, you okay?" A voice asked her as she thrashed around. She barely registered that it was Blake.

"Hyaaggggh!" was all she was able to come up with in response. There was black, disgusting goo all over the left side of her body and she couldn't shake it off and she couldn't wipe it off because then it would be on her other hand too and-

"Weiss, relax! It's going to dissolve in a second!" Ruby's voice came from behind her.

"She's fine!" she heard Blake shout. "Go help Yang!"

"But-"

"Go! I've got her!"

There was a pause filled only with Weiss convulsing and struggling not to spew her breakfast into the river-because that would just make her even more disgusted-then the scent of roses wafted over her, strong enough that it crowded out the smell of death and decay. Or maybe the Grimm smell was getting weaker?

"Weiss, look at me."

A hand rested on her non-gored shoulder and she instinctively flinched. She was already loath to allow physical contact with others, and in this moment when she'd just been ambushed by a giant death monster and had guts and grossness spewed all over her, her mental alarm bells were ringing so hard in her head she couldn't process anything else. She slammed her aura into overdrive to the point where there was a field a good two inches from her skin and clothing that forced the hand off of her.

"Weiss!"

She kept shaking.

"Weiss, look at me."

Slowly, Weiss turned and lifted her head to make eye contact with Blake.

How the _fuck_ did she look so calm right now?

"It's okay, Weiss. Breathe. Look, it's already gone." She pointed at Weiss' left arm, and Weiss followed to see that the Grimm gore was indeed almost entirely dissipated, just a few loose drops on her knuckles peeling away into black dust.

'_Why didn't my aura flare push this gunk off me?'_ she wondered idly-and somewhat angrily.

She slowly dialed her aura back to her skin.

"Hey," Blake said, placing her hand back on Weiss shoulder. "You're okay."

Weiss avoided looking at her, choosing to nod at the ground instead. "Yeah. Sorry. Thank you."

Her abject terror was now immediately replaced with crushing embarrassment. She was supposed to be a _huntress_, and she was just screaming like a little girl. She looked over to their other two team members to see that Yang was pushing one Beowolf away while another had its jaws clamped around her other arm. She flung it off of her with a mighty swing, and Ruby bisected it (yelling "Slice and dice!" as she did) while it was hurtling through the air. The action covered her in gore, naturally, but she didn't react to it at all beyond wrinkling her nose at the smell, and a few seconds later it all evaporated anyway.

Fearless.

And then there was Weiss, shrieking like a banshee and thrashing around like a dead fish.

'_Fuck me.'_

"Sorry. Thank you," she repeated nervously.

"It's okay, Weiss. If you need to take a step back, go ahead. I think we got this. I'm gonna go help, okay?"

Weiss met Blake's eyes and found genuine concern, something she wasn't really expecting from… well, from Blake.

In the back of her brain, she wondered if Blake was saying, 'Back off and stop wasting my time when I'm actually _helping_ the team.'

She didn't _look_ like that was what she was saying, but… Weiss wouldn't be surprised if she or anyone else felt that way right now. She felt it about herself.

"Okay," Blake said to fill the silence before turning to go.

"Sorry!... for stabbing you with the ice… back there…" Weiss said quietly.

Blake turned and gave her a kind smile. "Don't worry about it. No way you could have known I was coming."

She ran back towards Ruby and Yang, who were…

Weiss watched as Ruby sliced through the base of one of the thinner trees by her, then Yang ran up and punched the thing, sending it crashing into an Ursa that was running up to them. They didn't need to make any call-outs, didn't need to talk or coordinate that.

Weiss doubted she would have anywhere near this kind of synergy with Winter. A pang of… not jealousy, but… longing (?) filled Weiss, a deep desire for something as close as what Ruby and Yang had.

She also needed to help. It wouldn't be acceptable for her to 'take a step back'. She needed to make sure she belonged on this team.

Ruby and Yang were off to her right, with Blake once again darting through branches above them. She looked left.

She spotted another Ursa running in from the end of the ice wall she'd made-that made at least four Ursa now, right? She lifted her sword to cast a ray of ice at the mons-

To think she'd been whining about not being named leader a couple weeks ago. What kind of leader had a breakdown the very first instant she came in contact with a Beowolf?

The self disgust running through her head made her falter, shaking hands unable to maintain any sense of aim towards her target. She pulled back and gripped Myrtenaster tightly with both hands, looking down at the-

HA! She hadn't even remembered to click to the next Dust cylinder.

What a joke.

She looked up again to see that the Ursa was getting closer to her team. Her team would be able to handle it, of course, but… she needed to _do_ something. She needed to contribute. She needed to-

She needed to leave. She had no business being here.

'_No. No! I came here to be a huntress, damn it. I _will _be a huntress.'_

Angry and defiant, she let loose a ragged scream of frustration as she swiped her rapier forward, pouring way too much aura into her casting.

Weiss didn't even register what she'd done until she saw the aftereffects. Javelins of ice, anywhere from three inches to six feet long, dozens and dozens of them, spearing through the forest, impaling trees and dirt and Grimm in a wide arc in front of her. Two larger spears punctured the side of the Ursa she'd been meaning to hit, and dark wisps of smoke started peeling off its still form.

At least there was that. She did _something_ right.

She looked around a bit more to take in what she'd done. For five feet to either side of her and about twenty feet forward, the forest looked almost like it had been hit by a sideways snowfall. Little glass-like shards of ice buried themselves into the tree trunks and branches and forest floor in front of her, and there were at least eight Beowolves either joining the Ursa in death of cut up too much to move.

Weiss looked down at the sword in her hand.

'_... Woops.'_

She definitely had lost her scroll there. There was a notable absence of mana flowing from her mind, and she pulled out her scroll to check.

71%

She must have spent at least fifteen percent of her aura on that attack. She was lucky the Dust even held together enough to actually act the way she'd intended, subconsciously as it was. Usually if Dust was subjected to that much aura that quickly it just lost composure and exploded on the spot.

"Whoa," Yang's voice rang out.

Weiss looked over to see all three of her teammates paused for a brief moment, Yang looking surprised at the ice shards buried in the trees less than ten feet away from her and the other two looking at her, Ruby wide-eyed and Blake frowning with concern.

There were only two Beowolves left standing that Weiss could see, both running up from the far right. Blake, who was closest to them, noticed Weiss' look and turned, casually tossing her blade out at an incredible speed. It buried itself in one of the wolf's shoulders and as soon as it did, she yanked back hard. The creature jerked sideways, falling to the ground while its back legs careening around and knocking into the other Beowolf, making it stumble.

Ruby rushed up and sliced the feet out from the off balance one, then buried her massive blade into its back. Blake sent a shadow running at the one she'd knocked down, and as soon as Gambol Shroud was back in her hand she teleported to it and stabbed down into the Beowolf's skull in one smooth motion.

A low whistle came out from Yang's lips as she gave a slow, impressed nod of approval.

A whine resounded from behind her, and Yang turned to see one of the Beowolves that had been hit by Weiss'... magical tantrum wheezing on the ground, four ice shards scattered between its shoulder, stomach, and back leg on one side of its body.

She briskly marched up and gave it one swift punch to the head. Weiss heard _something_ snap or crack and the thing was dissolving a second later.

"Damn, we're awesome!" Yang declared proudly, placing her hands on her hips triumphantly. She started walking over to where Weiss was standing. "You okay, Weiss? I heard you scream but could see what was going o-"

"Weiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssss!" Ruby yelled, crashing into Weiss with a hug. While normally just a little annoying at this point, this hug was genuinely a bit terrifying because Ruby still had an unfurled Crescent Rose in her hand. "Are you okay?! I'm sorry, I totally shoulda shot that Beodouche before it got to you. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and figured you had it and went to help Yang, but Yang's _Yang_ and I should backed you up and I'm s-"

"Ruby, I'm fine. Please let go of me."

She knew Ruby's heart was in the right place, but right now Weiss most certainly did not deserve a hug. Much less apologies. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"_I'm_ the one who's sorry," she said as Ruby reluctantly let go of her and took a step back. "I… panicked and… got grossed out and… I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry!" Ruby chirped.

At the same time, Yang consoled her with, "No big deal! Don't worry about it, we were fine. We're all badasses."

"But it _could_ have been a big deal!" Weiss blurted. "If we were in a more dangerous situation, me freaking out and distracting myself _and _you guys could have gotten us killed!"

"Noooooo!" Ruby cooed simply, stepping forward and hugging Weiss again.

Yang just shrugged. "That's why we're training! So y-we'll _all_ be ready when it matters."

Weiss didn't fail to catch the stumble. The implication Yang was making, whether she meant to or not, was true. _Weiss_ was the one that wasn't ready yet. The rest of them were already… well, as Yang said, badasses.

She nudged Ruby off of her.

"It was her first time getting Grimm guts on her," Blake said softly from behind them.

"Oooooooooooh!" Yang exclaimed. "Yeah, I freaked the fuck out my first time too. Got black blood in my mouth and hair and everything. Was puking for like an hour-that shit's gross. Don't beat yourself up over it, Weiss."

That last sentence seemed to be very pointed, and the way Yang's eye contact got more intense as she said it made that feeling redouble.

"Okay," Weiss answered. It was nice to know that someone as… indomitable as _Yang_ had freaked out once too. Granted, she'd probably been, like, _three_ when that happened, so Weiss was still obscenely far behind.

"And that ice volley whowhat'sit you did there was dope," Yang added.

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed with a bounce. "That was so awesome! You killed, like, _ten _Grimm with _one_ move!"

"Why didn't you just _lead_ with that?" Yang asked with a grin.

"Because it used _way _to much aura," Weiss replied with a grimace.

"Ah. Hey, what am I at?" Yang wondered aloud, pulling out her scroll. "Eighty-three. Nice!"

"_How?!_" Blake flustered. "I saw you take at _least_ a dozen claws and jaws!"

"Heehee, that rhymes," Ruby giggled to herself.

Yang smiled widely and proudly. "Like I said: badass. You may now call me M'lady Badass Her Majesty Supreme Honor Yang. Or Yang for short. I will accept tribute in the form of chocolate or Tween Vale Weekly mag-"

A loud, animal noise, something like a yowl mixed with a roar, sounded out from behind them, across the river. They all immediately turned, readying their weapons again, to see…

"What the frickity frack?" Ruby said for all of them.

The massive shape of a Grimm, easily a Beowolf-and-a-half in length and height, was sprawled on the ground, twitching, Professor Goodwitch still leaning against the same tree she'd been under before the fight started. From the angle, Weiss couldn't tell what the thing was until she saw the tail from another involuntary spasm.

"It's a Stalker," she realized aloud.

Stalkers were a large jungle cat form of Grimm, similar in appearance to an absurdly large panther with the added Grimm bone plating. And they were just as stealthy and a thousand times more deadly. They were considered 'standard' Grimm, akin to Deathstalkers and Beringels, where Beowolves and and Boarbatusks and Ursai were 'lesser' Grimm (some classified Ursai as the lower end of standard Grimm, but they were basing that solely off of size rather than difficulty to deal with them in a fight). A standard Grimm could give a lone novice huntress plenty of reason to worry. Especially Stalkers in dark woods. They had an ability not too dissimilar to Blake's semblance where they could make shadow duplicates of themselves, usually one or two at a time. They couldn't teleport to them like Blake, but the shadows did have more substance and delivered an impact if they hit you. The Stalkers mostly used them as distractions, though, as it's reportedly easy to mistake a fast moving shadow for a real Stalker in the gloom of a forest.

Weiss had never heard of Stalkers in the Emerald Forest. She thought they mostly lived in the south. They were one of the big reasons why the stretch of land connecting Vacuo and Vale could never be settled.

And there was one here, paralyzed on the riverbank a dozen feet from their professor.

The professor that they were supposed to be escorting and protecting.

'_... Shit,'_ Weiss thought as she realized how bad this was and what it meant for them and their grade.

"Shit," Yang said aloud.

They all rushed forward together, keeping a few safe feet away from the panting Stalker and up to the professor.

"Professor Goodwitch!" Ruby cried out as they got close. "Are you okay?"

Professor Goodwitch pushed off the tree and walked forward to meet them, brushing off her shoulder where it had been in contact with the bark. "Oh, I'm quite alright," she answered calmly. "However, your hypothetical Useless Civilians are quite dead, I'm afraid." She looked pointedly at the Stalker.

Up close it was more terrifying than any of the pictures or descriptions Weiss had seen in their textbook. Pictures and words just… they don't do a great job of conveying scale. This thing was _huge_. If it was standing upright it would easily be two Weisses tall and about a billion Weisses wide, and that wasn't even getting into how long it was. Its rumbling wheezes were loud enough they could have been a car engine.

And this thing was apparently able to be stealthy enough to jump on trained, graduated huntsmen while they were completely unaware of its presence.

Weiss shuddered.

"Does that mean we fail?" she asked worriedly.

"No. Quite frankly, we expect you to mess up a time or two," Professor Goodwitch explained. "This will not give you an automatic failure. However, it will still be reflected in your grade, as you lost sight of your principal objective."

The professor's disapproval was enough to even make Yang wince, and Weiss hung her head in shame.

"What did you do to it?" Ruby asked, pointing at the paralyzed, massive Grimm nearby.

Professor Goodwitch's expression remained completely impassive as she nonchalantly answered, "Oh, just sent a rock from the river into its spinal cord. Please go silence it now, that breathing is quite bothersome."

The four girls looked at each other, then Ruby piped up with, "I'll do it!"

She gave a single, excited skip as she started toward the beast. As she approached, it let out a growl that shook the dirt and pebbles beneath their feet and was scary enough that Weiss took a half step back, but Ruby continued forward undeterred. She stopped a handful of feet away from its massive head and Weiss felt like the hateful glare it was giving her _had_ to be damaging her aura.

"Whooooa," Weiss heard Ruby breath.

The Grimm snapped its jaws at her, trying to bite her but unable to move. Its head was large enough that it could have taken everything above Ruby's shins in one bite.

Without any more delay, Ruby lifted her scythe into the air with two hands and shouted, "DIE, EVIL DEMON CAT!" and slammed her blade down into the side of its head. She pulled it out, stabbed the end triumphantly into the ground to pose heroically, her cape shifting slightly with a light breeze Weiss couldn't feel through her aura, then walked back to them.

"Um… Ruby?" Blade spoke up.

"I know, I looked awesome, right?"

"No, uh-I mean of course, but…" Blake pointed at the Stalker.

… It wasn't dissolving.

Weiss squinted and leaned forward a bit. Was its chest still moving, or was that her imagination?

"How the fuck is it still alive?!" Yang said for her.

"Language, please," the professor admonished tiredly. "And Stalkers are quite durable. This one is even quite larger than normal."

"Go cut its head off, Ruby," Yang said in response.

Ruby looked down at her scythe blade, its point resting in the ground. "I don't think Crescent Rose is big enough," she pondered, sounding surprised by her admission.

Ever the problem solver, Ruby twirled around and dug her blade deeper into the dirt to stabilize it as she buried three high caliber rounds into the Grimm's head.

A second passed, then another. Finally, black wisps of smoke began peeling off of what was now a corpse.

"Yikes, dude," Yang muttered.

"Are we going to run into more of those?" Blake asked fearfully.

It was comforting for Weiss to know she wasn't the only one that was scared.

"Unlikely, but it can't be ruled out," Professor Goodwitch answered. "Stalkers are extremely rare in these woods. Rest assured, if another shows up, I will immediately assist. Your score will not be affected by an inexperience with dealing with such a dangerous foe."

"So we shouldn't lose points for it attacking you, right?" Weiss asked hopefully.

"Wrong. The issue is not that a Stalker attacked your civilian charges, it's that any Grimm were able to without you being aware because you neglected them."

'_... Ouch.'_

Ruby scratched her head. "Sorryyy…" she told the professor's feet.

Professor Goodwitch gave her a surprisingly kind smile. "It's quite alright, girls. This is your first Hunt. If you were already perfect at it, you wouldn't need to be at Beacon. These are all things for you to learn. Next time you have to engage an enemy, remember to always ensure the safety of the civilians you are protecting."

Ruby perked up a little bit. "Yes, ma'am! We'll be a million times better from now on!"

"Hm," the professor grunted. "I'll do my best to quantify that. Now, on to more pressing issues." She looked at Weiss.

'_Oh no.'_

"Shall we be continuing?"

'_She saw,'_ Weiss concluded, a sinking feeling in her gut. All the shame and embarrassment from a couple minutes ago came flooding back in full.

What was she doing here? She didn't belong here. She belonged it manors and piano halls and board rooms.

She couldn't breathe. Her eyes were open but she registered the world only as a blur. Her head was spinning and she couldn't put a single string of coherent thoughts together beyond, '_You don't deserve to be here.'_

"Weiss?" Ruby's voice cut through the dissonance and discord. Big, shining silver eyes distinguished themselves amongst the blur of everything else. "Hey, you okay? You wanna talk for a second?"

Either a second or an hour passed and Weiss wasn't even sure she gave a response, but Ruby turned to the side and said, "Hey Professor, can we have a second?"

"Of course."

Ruby grabbed Weiss' hand and dragged her… somewhere. Weiss had no idea where they were right now. Her breathing was getting too fast, too light. She getting dizzy and somehow felt like her whole body was numb but also hurt at the same time.

'_Why am I here?'_

* * *

**Aight, so before ya'll flip out about everything, can I just say I really enjoyed writing the action scenes in this chapter? Like, a lot. Now I want to go be an animator and actually make them visually. **

**Anyway, quick shout out to Sashu for Beta reading and finding my typos because I suck. Also shout out to Alucard45 for Alpha reading and making me realize I needed to add some thought processes for Weiss for her character development. If you're wondering what the difference between Alpha and Beta reading is... keep wondering cuz I need to figure one out. **

**Also, I like Yang. She was like a 6 on my Awesome scale before, but now she's like an 8 or 9. There's something just so absolute about a good ol' punch to the face. Idk what changed other than getting to write her actually going ham and tanking like a champ, which was very fun. **

**Anyway! Hope ya'll enjoyed : ) Please don't eviscerate me for making Weiss a sadgurl.**


	31. Hunting 3-3

Ruby was really worried about Weiss-like, _really_ worried. Her eyes were darting around, unfocused, almost manic, and she was hyperventilating like crazy.

As gently as possible, Ruby grabbed her partner's hand and led them both off to the side a bit. Some space and privacy should hopefully help. Weiss was the kind of person that recharged and centered herself with quiet and solitude. Ruby was the same way sometimes.

Well, the solitude part was the same. She usually was blaring her music a few too many hundred decibels above what would be considered "quiet".

"Weiss," she said when they stopped. "Weiss, can you look at me?"

Ruby waited while Weiss' gaze slowly focused in on Ruby's own, and once it did Weiss gave a single, adorably confused blink.

"Hi!" Ruby whispered.

Weiss huffed out a brief, bemused laugh. "Hello," she responded, her breathing finally starting to slow.

"You doin' okay?" Ruby asked.

"I-I'm fine," Weiss stammered, immediately looking down.

'_Right.'_

"Hey," she restarted, waiting a few seconds for Weiss to look at her again before continuing. "You're alright. The Grimm is dead and you're still standing here, all perfect and princessy!"

Weiss' lips twitched ever so slightly, but then she shook her head with a sigh. It looked like she was finally out of Panic Mode, so that was progress at least.

"It's not… I mean, yes, I did freak out about the Grimm disgustingness getting all over me, but…" She trailed off and looked over at the professor and their teammates. Ruby followed her gaze and saw Yang and Blake both jerk their heads and try to pretend like they hadn't been looking. Professor Goodwitch was just straight up facing the other direction.

"What am I doing here?" Weiss muttered in a way that gave Ruby the impression she was mostly talking to herself.

Her first inclination was to answer that they were on a Hunt, duh, but she got the feeling the question meant more than that.

"What do you mean?" she asked instead.

Weiss' shoulders slumped. "I mean why am I trying to become a huntress? I don't belong out here. I'm terrible at this! If I… _freak out_ the moment a Grimm hits me-while Yang is just swinging Grimm around by the teeth and you're exploding through them no problem and Blake is so good she's not even getting touched-then what the hells am I doing here?"

Oh. So she wasn't upset that she got attacked, she was upset that she freaked out.

Alright, time for Super Encouraging Team Leader Jutsu.

Ruby jabbed the tip of Crescent Rose into the ground so it could rest upright and gently grabbed Weiss' other hand too, giving them both a squeeze. "Hey, Weiss, you're _not_ terrible at this! You're freaking awesome! That Super Ice Blast Shard… Volley… Thing… that you did? That was epic!"

"It was an accident," Weiss replied dejectedly.

Undeterred, Ruby countered, "Yeah, so imagine how awesome it'll be when you do it on purpose!"

Weiss frowned and opened her mouth to respond, then closed it and frowned deeper, as if unable to find a good argument against that.

Haha! Point for Super Encouraging Team Leader Jutsu!... SETLJ? No, that was dumb and weird.

"And there's nothing to be ashamed of about freaking out a lil' bit the first time you get Grimm grossness on you! We did too!"

That was a tiny fib-Ruby hadn't freaked out at all the first time, or any time, she got splattered with Grimm blood. She remembered just thinking it was weird that their blood was black and wrinkling her nose at the smell-something she still did, 'cause, well, _gross_. But Yang really _had_ freaked out! Ruby was really young when it happened so she didn't remember everything, but she still had a mental video in her head of a ten year old Yang panicking and flailing her arms everywhere to try to get the blood off of her and punching Mom's leg a bunch when she rushed over to help.

"But I'm so far behind," Weiss lamented, determined to keep hating herself.

Ruby shook her head. "Nuh-uh! Sure, you're a little behind when it comes to dealing with the evil monsters of doooom, but you're way ahead in your Dust casting and your studies and your semblance is super OP and you're just really awesome! So this is just something you gotta train! Just like I have to train to be a better leader, or actually do my homework, or not fall asleep in Professor Porkybutt's class!"

Weiss cracked the tiniest of smiles at Ruby's nickname for The Worst Professor, but offered no response.

"It's a skill like any other," Ruby added, hoping to drive the point home. "And if your music and sword fighting and Dust casting are any indication, when you train at something you get really really good at it. So just… give yourself time to train!"

Weiss pursed her lips, scrunching her eyebrows together as she looked at Ruby. "...Okay," she finally conceded with a whisper.

Ruby gave her a beaming smile. "Awesome!" Another point for SETeLeJ!... No, that was terrible too. "So, you want to keep going? Or… should we call it a day?"

Ruby _really_ hoped Weiss was willing to keep going. She was having a ton of fun. Killing Grimm with Yang was always a blast-there was just something so exhilarating about wombo comboing their awesome moves together. And now they had Weiss and Blake with them too!

It was weird fighting with so many extra people though. Ruby wasn't used to not having to address some of the Grimm she saw because someone else was going to take care of them. She almost smacked Blake with Crescent Rose twice in that last fight because she kept ninja leaping at a Beowolf Ruby was about to hit.

No big deal though! That's why they were training! Some day, they'd all be able to, like, super predict what they were all doing so they looked like one elite fighting machine. At least, that's how Dad and Uncle Qrow describe it whenever they wistfully reminisce about "the good old days".

Ruby really, _really_ hoped things didn't end for her team the way they had with her parents'. She wanted to always have the good old days. So they'd just be… good days?

Weiss looked over at the rest of the group, eyes wide and eyebrows raised with worry, but then her face settled into a determined expression and she turned back to Ruby. "No, let's keep going. I meant it when I said I wanted to succeed."

Ruby gave Weiss the biggest, proudest smile she could make-and she was a good smiler, so it was probably epic. Weiss was so brave! Going from an almost-maybe-actual meltdown to determined to keep moving.

"Just keep moving forward," Ruby said, quoting something her uncle always told her. She gave Weiss' hands one last squeeze of encouragement, then picked her scythe back up and lead the way back to the group.

"Alright, Team RWBY! Let's go kick some more… butt!" She was going to try to come up with a clever name for Grimm butt, but what would that be, other than Grutt? Which was… probably not something she should say out loud.

As soon as they got close enough, Yang walked up and wrapped an arm around Weiss' shoulders, using the tips of her fingers to wiggle Weiss' hair a bit. "Proud o' you, Ice Queen," she said affectionately.

"Don't mess up my hair!" Weiss protested, sounding a lot like Ruby, but when she yanked Yang's hand off her head only for Yang to settle it on her shoulder and give her a sideways hug, she only squirmed a _little_ bit, giving what Ruby imagine Weiss thought of as an obligatory pout.

Blake simply gave Weiss a solemn nod of acknowledgement that Weiss returned and… and that was it?

They really didn't talk much if they didn't have a Rose/Xiao Long to prompt them, did they?

"So… which way are we going?" Ruby asked.

Blake scoff-laughed and pointed. "C'mon."

"Follow us, Mysteriously Resurrected Helpless Civilian!" Ruby declared to Professor Goodwitch, who quirked an eyebrow her way.

"Hey, Ruby?" Weiss spoke up as they started walking.

"Yes, Weiss?" Ruby replied with a smile.

"Do you mind if I do the… outrunning or whatever? Just for a little bit?"

Ruby studied Weiss' face for a moment, reaching the conclusion that she was troubled but determined. '_She wants some alone time to think,'_ Ruby knew. '_She listened to me, but now she needs to figure out how she feels about it.'_

"Sure! Just remember to stay in sight and to check in with err'body every now and then."

Weiss gave her a grateful nod and, once they got to the treeline, skated off to the side with her glyphs.

Blake started jogging forward, but Ruby called out, "Hold up. Blake, Yang, how 'bout we stay a little more compact this time, just in case there are more of those freaky Stalkers lurking about?"

Blake turned and blinked at her, then nodded quickly in agreement. "That sounds good, yeah."

"Pffft," Yang scoffed. "Let me go first then, I can take 'em."

"Can you, though?" Blake said a mocking thoughtfulness.

"Heeeeeells yeah! Let me at 'em!" She took two steps forward, then looked at Blake. "You gotta point me in the right direction, though," she admitted, making Blake bust out laughing.

"Yang, no!" Ruby scolded. "I think you and I should stay with the professor and Blake should just be a little bit ahead of us."

Yang turned to frown at her, then at Professor Goodwitch, then at Ruby again. "But I don't wanna."

"Yeah, well, you gotta! I'm team leader so you have to listen to me!" She placed her hands on her hips and posed heroically for dramatic effect.

"Yeah, well… I'm your big sister, so you gotta listen to me!" Yang countered, crossing her arms.

"... Wait, that's not how this works!"

Yang grinned triumphantly. "Oh yeah? Do you not remember Dad saying you have to listen to everything I say? He said it, like, six times the day he dropped us off at the airport."

"Yeah, but I wasn't team leader yet!"

"So? I'm still the big sister. I have supreme executive authority granted to me by Pops. And I say I get to run ahead and fight all the Grimm like a badass."

… Darn it. She was right.

"But-wha-buh… no! I'm calling Dad!"

Ruby took out her scroll, flipped it open, and… saw she had no service, the red circle and line through the little radio wave symbol in the corner seeming to mock her.

"Darn it!"

"Haha!" Yang cheered. She started walking ahead. "Blake, you should totally tell me if I'm going the wrong way, 'cause otherwise I'ma just keep ooooooon walkin'."

"Alright, bye," Blake grinned.

"Yang-uh! Wait!" Ruby dashed to get in front of her sister and force her to stop. "New… addamemnum to the exe…cutor... powers. When we're on a Hunt, _I'm_ in charge! 'Cause I'm team leader! You can be in charge when we're doing boring crap, like… anything that's not a Hunt."

Yang placed her hand on her chin in thought. "Hmmm… nope!"

"Nope?! Whadaya mean, 'nope'?! You can't nope that!"

"Yuh-huh I can! As the Lady Supreme Executor Boss Beoch, I have to approve all edamames to the executive powers!"

"The word is addamemnum, ya big dumb."

"The word is _addendum_," Blake sighed.

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Oh, well… what she said!" Ruby finished.

Yang rolled her eyes. "Whatever mang, I have veto powers, that's all that matters. I also declare that the word is now addamemnoo."

"What?! You can't do that! I veto that!" Ruby bounced angrily in protest.

"I veto your veto!"

"B-but my lord, is that legal?"

Yang grinned. "I will make it legal!"

"Ladies, however you figure this out, you should resolve it quickly," Professor Goodwitch spoke up, reminding Ruby that they had an audience. "I believe your teammate has spaced out and wandered off."

OH NO!

Ruby turned and scanned the trees frantically for Weiss. Where was she?!

"Weiiiiiss?!" she yelled in the direction she'd skated off to.

"... What?!" came a distant reply.

"Come back a little closer please," Ruby called back, sighing in relief that her partner hadn't gotten gored by a Stalker while she was arguing with her sister.

A few seconds later Weiss came into view, hopping from glyph to glyph back to the group and landing a few feet away with a soft rustle.

"What's going on?"

"They're being sisters," Blake explained coolly, backing up and leaning against a tree, crossing her arms like she was getting ready for a long wait.

Dumb, sassy ninja!

"I'm not being-I'm just being a leader! And Yang's being a dumb!"

"Dumb is not a noun, Ruby," Weiss said.

"YouknowwhatImean!"

"True."

"Hey!" Yang protested. "I just want to be in formation like last time so I can walk ahead and charge at the bad guys!"

Weiss looked puzzled. "Sure, I thought that was working okay." She turned to Ruby. "Are you changing that?"

"Yeah! I think me and Yang sh-I mean, Yang and I should stay with the professor so we can be more… defensey in case there's another Stalker sneak attack or something."

"Oh. That makes sense," Weiss stated.

Ruby pointed at Weiss and looked at her sister. "See?! The smart girl agrees with me!"

"Wow, okay," Blake quipped.

"What deeheck, Weiss?" Yang objected, flailing her hands up in the air dramatically-and goofily. "Doesn't it make more sense for me to be in front so that if something attacks us, I can take the first hit and then hit back really hard?"

"Sure, but Ruby's saying she's more concerned about an attack from behind, so wouldn't you need to be there to take the first hit?... _And_ it's not like you're really in front anyway. Blake is. Really, you're in the middle, so you'd be the last one to be attacked."

Yang blinked. She raised a hand, pointing her finger at Weiss and opening her mouth to argue, then backtracked.

Over by her tree, Blake was covering her mouth with a fist, but she was very clearly suppressing down a laugh.

"B-but I _can_ be in front!" Yang finally spurted out. "Blake can just point me the right way if I get off track!" She looked over at Blake hopefully.

"Possible," Blake admitted, "but that sounds like a lot more work… And also very very dumb."

Yang pouted. "Your face is very dumb."

"Oh, don't worry. I'm well aware of your opinion on the intellectual aptitude of my face," Blake sighed.

The unexpected sound of Weiss giggling broke out from Ruby's side, that wonderful wind chime noise. But when Yang turned to glare at Weiss, her expression was the picture of innocence, her hands clasped daintily in front of her.

Okay, so she was feeling better.

"Fine!" Yang finally conceded, waving her hands around like an ape again. "I'll stay with Peanut and Professor Grumpywitch!"

"Ahem," the professor cut in.

"Yeah yeah yeah," Yang grumbled.

Ruby pumped a fist to celebrate her victory. "Yes! And I'll take your concession as an explicit agreement that _I'm_ in charge when we're on Hunts!"

"_Im_plicit," Weiss and Blake both corrected at the same time, then grinned at each other.

"Yeah, that too," Ruby added.

"You can be in charge of mah boot in yer face," Yang grumbled, waddling off with her hands in her pockets.

Ruby wasn't too worried. When Yang got upsetti spaghetti, she didn't stay that way for very long. But Ruby wasn't sure why being in front meant so much to her, though.

"Yang," Blake called out.

Yang turned.

"That way," Blake said, pointing.

Yang glared at her, then quickly picked a stick up from the ground and chucked it at her partner, who danced to the side with a snicker.

Blake led the way forward and, curiously enough, Weiss decided to walk beside her.

"You know," Ruby heard Blake tell Weiss, "we should start a business where we just charge these two chuckleheads whenever we have to correct their grammar. Or just, you know, their words."

Weiss nodded in agreement. "I'd hazard a guess that we'd be more profitable than the SDC."

Blake busted out laughing at that, and Weiss, after a quick sideways glance her way, bobbed her head side-to-side ever so slightly in what looked suspiciously like a subdued Ruby Happy Wiggle.

Well this was nice. Those two were getting along! That was… a way better outcome than Ruby could have hoped to expect to come from Weiss' panic attack.

"By the way," Blake added, "just so you're not caught off guard: Yang has declared that the word addendum is now addamemnoo."

Weiss shook her head like she was taken aback. "What?"

"Yep. She has declared it so, which apparently makes it so. So."

"Well… that's ridiculous!"

Blake shrugged nonchalantly. "That's a conversation you'll have to have with Yang and Ember Celica, so… good luck."

Weiss turned to glance back at Yang just as Yang through another stick at Blake that bounced off the girl's shoulder, prompting her to scamper ahead with another laugh. When Yang picked up another stick and looked at Weiss, Weiss' eyes went wide and she bounded after Blake on a series of glyphs with an "eep!"

Once they got about thirty feet ahead, Blake slowed down to match their pace again and the two girls started talking again. At one point, Blake pointed off to their left at the wall of ice Weiss had made that was still standing tall, and Weiss nodded and gave a big long response.

Ruby smiled, happy they were getting along.

Then she looked over at Sulky Yang, who was also watching their two partners, trudging along beside her and realized she had some more Happiness Sharing to do.

"Hey," she said, bumping her shoulder into her sister's bicep. "Wassup?"

Yang's pouty face got deeper, but she kept her eyes on the two girls ahead of them. "I don't want to be on guard duty, Ruby. I want to be on _charge_ duty!"

"You still are! If a Grimm shows up, you can still charge at 'em! You just start from back here."

Yang huffed. "Sure. Whatever. If they get hurt 'cause I'm not close enough to protect them in time, though, then I'm gonna hold you upside down by your ankles and spin you around until you get stuck permanently dizzy."

Ah. There it was. This was all about Mama Bear Yang. She didn't want to be in front because she _wanted_ to get hit first, she wanted to be in front to make sure nobody else was.

She reached up and patted Yang on the back. "They'll be fine, Yangarang," she said, using one of Mom's nicknames. "They're tough cookies."

"If they were cookies you would have eaten them already," Yang said with a small smile.

"True," Ruby agreed, nodding sagely.

"It's just… I dunno, Ruby, if that giant death cat was any indication, there are some pretty big, hard hitting Grimm out here. And they might be tough but I don't think either of them is _that_ tough."

"Well Blake doesn't even _need_ to be tough, nothing can touch her anyway," Ruby consoled her sister. "And if something jumps at 'em, Weiss can do some crazy wizard crap to stall for you to get there."

"You sure she won't just freeze up and start shaking again?" Yang asked, glancing at Ruby with a worried frown that told Ruby the question came from genuine concern and not a desire to poke fun at their teammate.

After a moment, Ruby shrugged. "I guess we'll find out."

No, she wasn't sure Weiss wouldn't panic again. She was pretty sure Weiss wasn't sure about that either. But she was determined to try, and that was all that mattered. If not today, then someday in the future she'd be able to stare down hordes of Grimm fearlessly. It was the team's job to help her get there. Ruby's job.

"I don't like gambling our teammates' safety, Ruby."

Ruby sighed. "I know. I don't either. But she's gotta get used to this somehow, right?"

"So let her get used to it from back here! If she does freeze up, she's going to be in trouble, and she's going to put Blake in trouble too. At least back here she'd have Professor Goodwitch to help if something goes really wrong."

They both looked back at the professor then, who was watching them silently, intently, and gave them a curt nod of affirmation.

"If any of you should be in danger, I would of course step in to help," she stated matter-of-factly.

That was reassuring. "Alright," she told Yang. "Give it a little while, then you can go swap to outrunning or whatever, send Weiss back here. Just… give her a few minutes to build her confidence back up, 'kay? I don't want her thinking we're trying to baby her or anything."

"... Yeah, that's fair," Yang conceded, then let out a heavy sigh and stretched to mark the end of that topic. "Nice job back there, by the way. We still got da moves." She held a hand out to fist bump, and Ruby happily grabbed it and wiggled it around with a giggle.

"That Layup into Slice-and-Dice was so cool!" she cooed.

"Mhm. Oh! And I forgot to tell Weiss thanks for those glyphs!" Yang realized. "Those were sweet! I got turned into a Yang Rocket!"

Ruby grinned at that. "You should tell her that," she said. Weiss needed all the positive reinforcement she could get.

"I will. Also, did you see Blake jumpin' around and executin' those hoes like a sexy little ninja? That was awesome!"

Not exactly the word choice Ruby would have picked, but she was happy that her sister was happy with her partner. "Her freaking ribbons are crazy cool, yo," she replied.

"I know, right! When she, like, chokelined that charging Beowolf for me to cave its chest in? That was, like, super awesome synergy or whatever."

"Not as sweet as our Tree Attack!" Ruby reminded her sister, who laughed.

"Oh yeah, that was epic. What should we call that? I wanna do it again."

"... Not… Tree Attack?" Ruby guessed.

Yang rolled her eyes. "No, probably not Tree Attack, Ruby."

"Darn. Uuuuum…. What about Ent Smash?"

"I feel like that might be copyrighted."

"Hmph."

"But the author has no idea how copyright laws work, so Ent Smash it is!"

Ruby grinned, then pouted. "That's basically synonymous with Tree Attack, you know," she grumped.

Yang quirked a bemused eyebrow at her. "Weiss is right, you're a total dolt."

"Yeah, well… yer face!"

"Darn. Ya done got me, Peanut," Yang smiled, pulling Ruby in for a sideways hug as they walked.

"Yeah I did."

A few minutes passed as they just walked together in silent company.

"Hey, what are they doing?" Ruby piped up, noticing that up ahead Blake and Weiss were crouching behind a boulder and a tree. It looked like the ground fell away a few feet past them, too. Was there a canyon or something up ahead?

Yang let go of Ruby and clicked out her gauntlets and Ruby followed suit, unholstering Crescent Rose and letting the beautiful weapon of awesomeness unfurl. The sound was apparently loud enough for Blake to hear, 'cause she turned to them at that moment and gestured them forward, then put a finger to her lips.

There was something up ahead.

Yang immediately rushed forward, crouching low and moving as quietly as possible over a forest floor covered with leaves and branches-which is to say, not all that quietly. Ruby followed a bit slower so she could stay closer to the professor.

She ran up to join Yang and Blake behind the boulder because it had more room to hide behind than the tree Weiss was at. Before them was indeed a canyon, about fifty feet deep and forty feet across, running almost perpendicular across their path as far as Ruby could see. The rock faces on either side were really rough, making the geography feel almost unnatural, like someone had taken a giant Crescent Rose and just gouged a crevasse into the earth.

A freaky thought.

"Look," Blake whispered, pointing down.

Ruby followed her gaze to find two Nevermores, bigger than freaking school buses, down on the floor of the canyon. They seemed to be eating a…

"Is that a _snake_?" Ruby whispered incredulously. It was huge! It was almost King Taijitu size but clearly not a Grimm. Its scales were mottled brown and red, though maybe the red was blood? It was very, _very_ dead, after all.

"A dire constrictor," Blake whispered back. "It's the not-corrupted version of a King Taijitu."

"How many freaking giant monsters are in these woods?!" Yang exclaimed in a hush.

"A lot," Professor Goodwitch answered academically.

"What should we do?" Weiss asked. She looked alarmed, but not… panicky. That was good.

"We took out one Nevermore before, but it was a lot of work," Blake thought out loud. "I'm not sure we could take two, but we do have the drop on them."

Yang crossed the fingers of her hands together and pushed outwards, stretching, and cracked her neck side to side. "We can take 'em."

"Yang, chill for a sec," Blake said.

"_You_ chill for a sec!"

"I _am_ chill!"

"Guys!" Weiss interrupted.

"Sorry," Blake acquiesced. "We could sneak around them?"

"We don't know how far this canyon goes, though," Weiss countered. "If we plan to walk all the way around it, that might take too long."

"You could get us across though, Weiss," Ruby pointed out. "Just make us a stairflake bridge. Bridgeflakes? Glyphbridge?"

"Oh, that's true," Weiss realized, blinking like she was surprised she hadn't thought of that herself.

"So we could walk along the canyon edge until we're out of sight of the killer birds and then bridge across?" Blake summarized.

Ruby nodded.

"I'm not sure I like leaving two Nevermores behind us," Yang said.

"You're just saying that because you want to fight them," Weiss accused her.

"No!" Yang defended herself. "For real! Remember what we learned in Porkybutt's class? Nevermore's have hella good hearing. If we leave them behind us and get in a fight on the other side of the canyon, there's a decent chance they'll come after us."

"But they're also extremely territorial, even against other species of Grimm, remember?" Weiss argued. "There's a very good chance these are the only Grimm we'll see for quite a while."

"Miss Xiao Long, did you just call one of your prestigious Beacon professors… Porkybutt?" Professor Goodwitch spoke up, looking both offended and amused at the same time.

Yang gulped. "Oh, uh… no. No I did not. You must have misheard me. That's a really funny nickname though. One that somebody that isn't one of his students that needs to make good grades in his class might totally use. Hypothetically."

Professor Goodwitch narrowed her eyes at Yang.

"So!" Blake exclaimed. "What's the plan?"

Everyone turned to Ruby.

"Oh!" Right. Plan. Team leader. Yikes. "Ummm… Weiss, how big is a... flock? A flock of Nevermores?"

"I thought there were only ever up to two together in an area," Blake said, to which Weiss nodded.

"Two max, barring weirdness like the hyper-condensed Grimm population in Mountain Glenn," she confirmed.

"Okay, so it should just be these two?" Ruby asked, waiting for a nod before proceeding. "'Kay. So let's head left-uh, west? Right? Which way are we facing?"

Blake rolled her eyes with a smile. "That way's north," she said, pointing across the canyon at a bit of an angle. "So yeah, if we go left along the canyon that would be west-northwest-ish."

"Right. Yeah, duh, west-northwest-ish, Ruby," Yang teased. "C'mon."

Blake swatted at Yang's arm and Yang stuck her tongue out at her in response.

"Alright, then we'll go with what Blake said earlier," Ruby decided. "We'll go wes-left and once we're far enough away that we won't risk the Neverbutts seeing us, we'll cross with Weiss' glyphs. Sound good?"

There were nods all around, though Yang's was somewhat begrudging and she was pouting just a bit. Ruby looked at the professor, looking for some sort of affirmation from an adult, but Professor Goodwitch just met her gaze impassively and blinked.

'_Darn it.'_

Oh well. She'd just have to hope it was a good plan. The professor would totally stop them if it was a _bad_ plan, right? Or would she just let them do a bad plan and learn the hard way?

She seemed like the type to do that.

Welp. With the information she had on how Nevermores were territorial and came in no more than two, this felt like the best option to Ruby. Fighting two of these things seemed to be a little much.

"There's a big ol' wall right there," Yang grumbled. "Just sayin'. We could totally do that Reverse Guillotine shit again."

"Language," the professor admonished.

Hm. Yang had a good point. The Reverse Guillotine was the most epic scene in any anime ever, but being written and without Red Like Roses Pt. 2 jamming in the background, it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as cool…

"We could only do that one at a time, Yang, assuming we can even get one of them against the wall," Blake said gently. "And we'd have to deal with the other in the meantime."

"Yeaaaah," Yang finally relented. "Alright. Let's be chickens."

"We're not being chickens, we're being… strategically cautious," Weiss corrected.

"Strategic chickens!"

"Ugh!" Weiss huffed. "Whatever, let's go."

Blake led the way, the group staying all together as they ran along the forest edge by the lip of the canyon. After about three minutes the Nevermores were two tiny black dots off in the distance.

"Alright, we should be good here," Ruby announced. "Weiss, if you would be so kind." She gave her partner an encouraging smile that made Weiss raise her chin proudly.

"Of course." She made an elegant, wavey gesture with her hand and a line of grey glyphs appeared, one after the other, each about five feet across, spanning the gap of the canyon.

"Stairflakes!" Ruby cheered, immediately running up to and halfway across the bridge before stopping. Nervous spikes of vertigo shot through her when she looked down and saw the massive drop beneath her and the thin layer of magical something-or-other that was all that was between her and a very long fall. She shook it off, though. No reason to be worried! Weiss wouldn't drop her, and even if she did, Ruby's semblance made falls like that not even a concern.

As Ruby hopped up and down a bit, Weiss began following her across.

"C'mon, guys!" Ruby called to the other two girls and their professor. "It's totally safe!"

Yang and Blake both approached slowly, Yang leading by putting a hesitant foot onto the greyflake in front of her, then another so that she was totally suspended in the air by Weiss' magic.

"This is _not_ okay, dude," Ruby heard her sister mutter.

They all started walking slowly across, the professor going last and giving the glyphs a curious, studious inspection before stepping onto them.

Ruby ran all the way across the bridge, stepped onto the ground on the far side of the canyon, then ran back to Weiss, who was now halfway across. "This is awesome!" she chirped.

Weiss' smile was proud and appreciative. "Thank you," she said softly. "Though please stop being a hyperactive dolt for a little bit while everyone gets acro-"

"*_SCRAAAAW!*" _

The terrible cry of a Nevermore echoed through the canyon, and everyone immediately turned towards the two dots in the distance.

One of the dots launched into the sky, quickly followed by the second with another loud screech that bounced off the rocky walls.

Were they…?

They were getting bigger.

They were coming this way.

"No _fucking_ way!" Yang yelled. "How did they see us?!"

"Language," the professor said again. "And you should have learned in Professor _Port's_ class that Nevermores have _very_ good eyesight."

"I didn't think it was _that_ good!" Weiss cried out in despair.

"Well, now you know," Professor Goodwitch replied simply.

'_Crap.'_

"Everyone go back to that side!" Ruby shouted, pointing back to the side that over half of the group was closest to.

The professor turned and jogged back, followed by Blake and Yang who were practically sprinting. Weiss summoned a white glyph to the side of the bridge and stepped onto it, launching herself the full distance to the ledge, leaving the bridge in place for Ruby to run across.

Once they were all grouped up, Weiss spoke up in a worried voice, "Now what?" She looked at Ruby, and Ruby in turn looked at the professor, who continued to look frustratingly impassive.

"What do we _do_?!" Ruby cried at her. She wasn't scared of any dumb Nevermores, but those things could hurt her friends and sister and that was _not_ okay. And her team was looking to _her_ for answers.

The professor remained calm despite there were two freaking Nevermores less than twenty seconds away.

"I don't know, what do you think we should do?" she asked.

"Is this really a teaching moment?!" Yang burst out angrily.

"Very much so," she answered. "The most valuable lesson you can learn as a huntress is how to deal with losing or hopeless situations. Now calm yourselves and focus. I believe you're capable of handling this."

Well… that was a nice vote of confidence.

Okay. What do, Ruby Rose, what do?

So the obvious issue was fighting two flyers out in the open. Especially when Ruby was the only one that could reliably reach them and she was the one with the greatest ranged power. They needed cover from the Nevermores featherstorms and a way for Blake and Yang-Yang particularly, since she was their hardest hitter-to reach them without having to rely on Weiss glyphs trying to help them get to moving targets in the air.

The trees were the obvious solution for the cover, and if the Nevermores flew low enough, Blake might be able to reach them by jumping from the canopy. Leaves and branches weren't reliable as far as cover went, though. They needed something more substantial like…

"The cave!"

Ruby turned to look at Blake, who blinked once, then nodded in understanding.

"Go!" Ruby shouted. "Follow Blake!"

The cave that they'd found the last group of Grimm in would be perfect shelter for them to bunker down and figure out a more substantial plan for dealing with this. It was pretty far, though. It would be at least a couple minutes of hard running while taking fire from above.

Ruby needed to distract the Nevermores.

The group had followed her orders, now sprinting together into the forest following Blake, who hopefully would be able to navigate them to where they needed to go. The Nevermores were bearing down, now very much _not_ tiny dots.

Ruby sent a couple shots up at the one on the right, and though she was a thousand percent sure she hit them both, the big dumb chicken didn't give any reaction beyond squawking at her angrily.

Dumb chickens.

Remembering what happened the last time she got featherstormed, Ruby tucked some of the fabric of her cape into her belt to subdue its flapping and hopefully keep her from being pinned down again.

"Ruby, come on!" she heard Yang shout. She turned to see Yang waiting for her a little ways into the room.

"Go!" Ruby repeated urgently. "I'm stalling them!"

"WHAT?!" Yang shouted, barreling back toward her. "No fucking way am I leaving you here!"

"G-"

Another high-pitched scraw, loud enough now from proximity that Ruby could feel her eardrums shaking, rang out, and Ruby looked up just in time to see one of the dumb chickens beat its wings powerfully, launching a volley of spikey feather projectiles of dumb chickeness down at her.

This time she was watching, though, and the shotgun attack was wide and inaccurate. Even though the projectiles were moving at near-bullet speed, Ruby was able to watch the two that were actually going to hit her. She pirouetted to the side to avoid one, in the same motion swinging Crescent Rose to bat the other to the side.

Easy.

One was going to hit Yang, who was still running to Ruby, but Yang saw it coming and just punched the point out of the air angrily.

Her hair was on fire and her eyes were a matching, flaming red.

"Yang, go!" Ruby repeated. "I'll catch up!"

As she shouted this, a shadow descended down on her, and she blurred to her right just in time to avoid getting crushed by the divebomb of the second Nevermore, who let out another deafening screech-or it would have been deafening, but in the Rose dimension it sounded muted and tame.

Unfortunately, the Nevermore's wide wingspan meant that Ruby didn't get quite far enough to the side to avoid getting caught under the slam of its wings as it crashed into the ground, though the impact was dulled by the effect of her semblance enough that she merely stumbled down to her knees from the weight. She rolled to the side and pushed herself up into a half-crouch, which was as tall as she could stand from where she was caught under the tent of a Nevermore wing.

She popped out of her semblance as she threw a wide, powerful swing into the Nevermore's side. The thing's stupid feathers were made out of carbon steel or something because Crescent Rose's tip simply skipped off the surface, and it was heavy enough that the impact barely nudged it.

"Run, Ruby!" Yang shouted, charging toward the currently grounded Nevermore.

"You run! I can outrun them, you can't! Go while I buy time!"

"I'm _not_ leaving you here!"

The Nevermore on top of Ruby lunged forward, snapping its beak at Yang, but Yang dashed to the side and punched it in the side of its face, eliciting a slight rocking and an angry *_skraw!*_.

"I don't need you to protect me, Yang!"

"Yes. You. Do!"

Yang accentuated each word with a full tilt punch into the Nevermore's chest. Each one made it take a small step back, and the third sent it slipping clumsily off the edge of the cliff, its head and body slamming down on the ledge and making the ground shake. It tipped backwards and fell over the ledge, but was able to push off the face of the cliff and twist in the air to get its wings under it before it hit the ground.

There was a familiar *_thwip thwip thwip* _noise that Ruby recognized as another featherstorm and, not knowing where the first Nevermore was to know which way to dodge, she simply blurred into the Rose Dimension, hoping that would be enough to protect her.

It was. One feather slammed into her back with enough force that she was slammed down to her knees again, though it did hardly any damage to her aura.

Yang didn't have a way to cheat damage, though, and when one of the feathers hit her shoulder, knocking her down and making her aura flicker, she cried out in alarm.

Crap.

If these feathers could make _Yang_ flicker… Well, the only thing Ruby had ever seen that could do that was a shot from Crescent Rose, and if Yang was focusing on keeping her aura up then even that wouldn't do it. So these feathers were hitting in the same ballpark as a high caliber sniper round.

To add to the worry, when Yang flickered she lost any energy she built up from her semblance, so now she didn't even have a super punch to trade back.

The ground all around them was now littered with so many feathers speared into the dirt that it was practically an extra, mini forest. Ruby threaded her way through the feathers-which, when she brushed past them, did indeed feel like they were made of flexible steel-to get to her sister's side and help her up.

"Yang, _go_," she demanded one last time. "I'm okay, I promise. I'll be right behind you."

Yang's eyes, now back to their pure lilac, flickered from Ruby to the Nevermore circling back around overhead to the one rising back up out of the canyon, then at Ruby again. "You better be. If you're not running into that cave literally on my heels, I'm turning around to chase you down and beat you up myself."

Ruby gave her a small smile. "I know," she said, giving her sister a kiss on the cheek. "And you could totally, one hundred percent catch me."

"Damn straight." Yang pushed herself to her feet with Ruby's not-very-helpful help, then started jogging back after the group. "Be a badass, Rubes!" she called behind her, her voice hitching to betray how torn she really was right now.

"Always!" Ruby called back before turning to face her enemies, the evil chickens of doom.

They were both now circled back toward her. She needed to buy a little time out here for Yang to get some distance, then she could start darting through the trees and try to use that cover to her advantage.

She cracked her neck from side to side like Yang did, then crouched low, ready to spring into action as the two massive monsters flew down towards her.

The second Nevermore stopped this time to featherstorm her while the other started to divebomb, and Ruby waited until it was committed to the wingbeat before making her move.

She slipped into the Rose Dimension and gave to long, powerful bounds sideways that carried her an easy fifteen feet to put the dive bombing Nevermore between her and the featherstorm. The volley impaled the ground around where she had been, making the forest of feathers even denser-to the point Ruby figured it would be next to impossible to run through.

She jumped up and kicked her semblance into overdrive, that familiar thrumming through her heart increasing in intensity as she flew up to and past the diving Nevermore, all the while continuing to climb the fifty feet it took to get above the second Nevermore. She dropped down onto its back as it squawked in what Ruby imagined was surprise, or whatever the Grimm equivalent of such an emotion would be. Grurprise?

She knew from experience and class that Nevermores were vulnerable on the underside of their neck and at the joints of their wings, and a bit on their legs. No way she could reach the legs from here regardless, but the neck…

Precariously trying to keep her balance, she ran up the Nevermore's back to try to get to a position where she could hook Crescent Rose around its neck, but then it rolled in the air and she slipped off, plummeting through the air. Her beautiful weapon almost slipped from her hands, too, but she quickly reached out to snag it with her off-hand too before transitioning into Rose Form and rocketing down at the first Nevermore that had hit the ground a couple seconds ago and was spreading its wings to lift off again.

This was her chance!

She began spinning, trying to build up enough momentum for the attack to work, and aimed for the wing joint as she flew. She slipped out of Rose Form so she could fall with the full force of gravity for the last few feet, but then she heard another _*thwip thwip thwip!*_ above and behind her and was forced to slip back into her semblance right before she got knocked around by another volley of feathers.

Plenty of the projectiles hit the grounded Nevermore but just bounced off of it harmlessly.

Well poop.

Ruby was able to force herself up from the ground before she hit it and landed on the first Nevermores back, trying to go for the decapitation again. The monster beat its wings and took off, though, and once again Ruby was sent tumbling off of its back.

No good. She was only able to line up the attack against the Nevermore she Reverse Guillotined because Weiss had frozen it in place.

Oh well. Yang should have had enough time to get decently ahead of her now, so she could run to the forest.

She did so, dashing behind a tree just in time to take cover from another salvo of chicken feathers.

Right. So she could run now, and she was going to need to move fast to stay ahead of the dumb chickens, but she couldn't run straight after her team 'cause then she and the Nevermores would catch up to them.

So zig-zags. Serpentine!

That description felt a little macabre considering what the Nevermores had been doing to that giant snake just a couple minutes ago.

Ruby shook the image away and focused on moving. She zigged a bit and zagged a bit, doing her best to look and listen for any more featherstorms.

Luckily, the Nevermores, while big and fast and tough and strong, were not ones for stealth or subtlety, and they gave Ruby ample amounts of caws and screeches for her to keep track of where they were above her, making figuring out which direction to take cover from rather simple.

She kept up the evasion for a few minutes, to the point where she was getting physically tired and relying on her semblance more and more. She'd burned through a decent chunk of her aura now-enough that she was a bit concerned for the next three to five hours after this. And Crescent Rose, as perfect and wonderful as she was, was not a lightweight, so Ruby's left arm was starting to burn.

'_Time to rejoin the team,'_ she decided, then she stopped.

… Wait, where was the team?

She'd been zigging and zagging too much! She totally lost track of where she was!

CRAP.

'_Okayokayokay, it's okay, Ruby Rose. You can figure this out.'_

The cave had marked the center of a small clearing in the forest, so if she could get up high enough, she could look around for the nearest break in the trees and there was a good chance that would be it, right?

She glanced up. Well, there wouldn't be any issues getting high enough. She had access to a quite literal bird's eye view.

'Kay, time to get crazy. She'd _ridden_ on a Nevermore a couple weeks ago, getting up on one and holding on long enough to look around would be no big deal.

She mentally flicked the aura switch in Crescent Rose to compact it back to carry mode and holstered it on her back. Having it out for this next part wouldn't be necessary.

She crouched low, crossed into the Rose Dimension, and then leapt up, just the jump by itself carrying her twenty feet into the air. In order to save on some aura, she elected not to go straight to flying, instead making her way up by jumping from branch to branch, her semblance's weird effect on her physics allowing her to land on and spring off of branches that normal wouldn't be able to ever support her weight.

A couple bounds and one big jump later and Ruby was clearing the canopy of the forest, sailing right up to and in between the two Nevermores who gave almost comical squawks of surprise.

Ruby pushed herself that little bit extra for flight to get up on top of one, then landed and gripped onto it tightly with all four limbs, dropping her semblance so she could see into the distance more clearly-everything kinda faded to red after a certain point in the Rose Dimension.

Unfortunately, it wasn't very easy to see a clearing anywhere around her. The trees all looked pretty much the same and the gap in them, if there was one to look for, apparently wasn't super noticeable. It didn't help that the Nevermore she was on top of was balking and bawking trying to shake her off.

It was pretty hard to make perception checks as a bobblehead.

Well this wasn't working.

Maybe she could use her semblance to fly up really high and then cut it off and look around while she was free falling? That wouldn't work though, right? The wind would hit her eyes and make them water. But wait, her aura would block that, so maybe it _would_ work!

Hm.

She could also just run around shouting "Marco" and wait until she heard a teammate yell "Polo"...

That was probably not the best idea.

Just then a flash of blue to her left caught her attention and she turned to see…

"Whooooa," she breathed.

A large explosion of icy blue was radiating up in the sky, a trail of iridescent Dust leading down to a point in the forest.

'_Weiss sent up a flare,'_ she realized.

_That_… was freaking dope.

The light got the attention of the Nevermores too, and they both turned to give it curious squawks. A moment passed, then they both took off toward it.

Well, at least Ruby had a free ride.

The Nevermores turned what would have been a three minute run into a thirty second flight. Being the idiot chickens they were, though, when they got to the shimmering blue crystals that were still suspended in the sky, floating slowly downward, they stopped to look at _those_ instead of following the trail to the ground.

"Ha! Later, ya dumb chickens," Ruby quipped before letting go of the Nevermore she was riding to start plummeting toward the ground.

She'd been right about her aura protecting her eyes from windshear, so at least there was that.

The dumb chickens both squawked in surprise at the reminder that Ruby had been there, and after a short delay she could hear the wingbeats above her of them diving after her in pursuit.

The sound of another featherstorm rang out and Ruby immediately slipped into her semblance and peeled to the side, dodging everything but apparently the last darn feather, which hit the bottom of her foot and made her spin out. Her semblance weakening gravity's pull on her also meant the bird that hadn't stopped to launch the volley was gaining on her.

She dropped her semblance to let gravity take over again (and also 'cause she was getting dangerously low on aura at this point), and the air friction helped to stabilize her spinning. She could feel her cape flapping around against her back and legs and was willing to bet she looked _really_ freaking cool right now.

Falling from the sky in a streamlined pose, cape flapping in the wind, two Nevermores diving down after her? That was an action movie sequence right there if she'd ever seen one. Step aside, Captain Vale. Ruby Rose is in da house.

From below her, Ruby saw four streaks of blue light blast out and up towards her, each one chiming out a crystalline tinkle as she whooshed by them. Above her, she heard four separate crashes like ice shattering and the Nevermores croaking in dismay.

Weiss was freaking awesome.

Ruby honed in on the spot where the ice missiles had come from and, sure enough, a couple seconds later she was close enough that she could make out Weiss herself.

Now that she could see it from above, Ruby realized why this cave had been impossible to spot from far away. The clearing of trees was only out to a couple dozen feet in front of the cave, and the cave itself was just a scoop out of a raised bit of rock in the forest, so there were trees on _top_ of it, too. No way she could have seen this.

Okayokayokay, time to focus. Now was her chance for an epic super hero landing.

She whipped out Crescent Rose and unfurled it, preparing to stab it into the top of the cave. She could use it to slow her momentum as she carved a line down to the ground. It would be awesome!

Apparently she wasn't account for, like, physics or something, though, because when she got to the point twenty feet above the ground where the top of the cave was, she swung Crescent Rose into the rock. It worked, biting deep into the stone, but Ruby kept falling and her grip on her weapon was evidently not strong enough. Crescent Rose jerked to a stop and Ruby got yanked around before letting go and falling with a scared yelp.

She managed to slip into her semblance _just_ before she hit the ground, which probably saved her from going splat into a Ruby pancake. The impact still hurt like heck, though, and she landed on her back and had the wind knocked out of her painfully.

"Aaagh," she moaned.

"Ruby!" she heard Weiss and Yang both cry out from somewhere nearby-but-also-in-the-distance, but her vision was so blurred she might as well have had her eyes closed, so she couldn't see them.

She felt something wrap around her arm, though it was a dulled, muted sensation that didn't make much sense.

"Ruby, turn off your semblance!" she heard Yang yell.

'_What?... Oh.'_

Ruby poofed back into the real world, and while that helped her vision clear up a bit, it did nothing to ease the pain in her back or help her lungs not feel like they'd been turned inside out.

"Aaaagh," she repeated.

"Ruby, can you hear me?!" she heard Yang shout, though now that her semblance wasn't diluting and filtering the noise, the volume was a lot higher than it was before.

"Looooouuud," she groaned.

"They're coming back!" she heard Blake cry out from nearby.

"Get her inside!" Weiss yelled.

The sensation on Ruby's arm-that had apparently been Yang's hand-moved around to just under her shoulder, then a similar feeling appeared under her other shoulder.

'_Hehehe, two Yangs,'_ she thought.

Wait, no. Yang had two arms, didn't she?

Did _Ruby _have two arms?

She wiggled and, yep, two arms. Nice.

Yang started dragging her backwards and Ruby dimly pieced together what was happening.

"Noooo, Creshha Rooose," she mourned, reaching out with both hands to flail them, trying to grab her weapon. Wait, she was still at the top of the cave. Were Ruby's arms long enough to reach her?

… Mayyyybe.

She flailed some more.

Yang pulled her into the darkness of a cave, then there was a familiar _*thwip thwip thwip!* _sound. What was that noise again?

It was immediately followed by a musical ringing and a wall of blue filled Ruby's vision, and it radiated cold. A bunch of thunking noises followed soon after.

The blueness blocked off the entrance to the cave, though, including sunlight, and everything got a lot darker, only weird fractals of blue light coming through the wall illuminating anything.

"Nice, Weiss," she heard Blake say.

"Hehe, rhyme," Ruby snickered.

A piercing shriek made the entire world vibrate, earthquake style, and the huge form of a giant chicken slammed into the blueness-ice! It was ice!

The impact made Weiss and Blake both yelp in surprise, but Ruby just chuckled.

"Angry bird," she giggled, pointing.

"Oh dear," Weiss muttered.

"Ruby, are you okay?" Yang asked from where she now was leaning over Ruby's face.

"Hehehe. Yerrrr momma," Ruby replied.

"Is AWOL, yeah. Did you get some brain damage from that fall?" Yang scooped Ruby up by the shoulders and hugged her close, and Ruby snuggled in and got comfy. "I promised I'd beat you up if you weren't behind me, but if I beat you up while you're brain dead then I'll feel really bad."

"Yer fashe isss brain derrd!" she chirped back.

The angry chicken on the other side of the ice wall squawked angrily and pecked at the ice.

"May I examine her for a moment?" she heard Professor GoobyWomp ask.

Yang shuffled Ruby around a bit and suddenly she found the professor's face leaning over her.

"Miss Rose, is your vision blurry?"

Ruby shook her head. "... Onlyyyy da par's that I can see," she giggled.

The professor was looking at her eyes. Like, _really _looking. It was kinda creepy.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Um… A chicken… cave. No! A burr cave. Wit' chicken neighbors."

"She seems to have a concussion," the professor concluded.

"Are you sure?" Blake asked. "Sounds a bit like standard Ruby."

"Blake, not now," Yang scolded.

"Sorry! Injecting humor into serious situations is supposed to be your job, but you're slacking!"

'_Slacking is a funny word,'_ Ruby thought.

"Don't worry, Miss Xiao Long," Professor GabbleWabble said. "Her aura will repair the damage shortly."

"How long?"

"Anywhere from five to thirty minutes, I'd guess. Until then, keep her head propped up and enjoy her rambles."

"Ramble bamble," Ruby added to clarify.

The dull thunks of the chicken's pecking kept resounding through the cave.

"Ruby, you absolute dolt," she heard Weiss say from somewhere behind Yang. "Why didn't you use your semblance to land instead of whatever the Crucible that nonsense was?!"

"Ssssuperhero!" Ruby answered succinctly.

"What?" Blake responded.

"Yang, translate," Weiss demanded.

Yang sighed. "She probably just wanted to do an epic superhero landing to look really cool."

"Ah…" Weiss said. "And instead she fell on her butt and knocked her brain into the future. Good."

"Not defending it," Yang chuckled lightly. "Just explaining."

"I'm from da future?" Ruby asked, really confused now.

Yang sighed again. "Yep, you came from an alternate timeline where you were born brainless. How 'bout you have some quiet time and focus on channeling your aura into that empty head of yours?" She hugged Ruby close again at that.

"Tha's pretty cool," Ruby remarked. She was a time traveler!

"Mhm," Yang replied. "Now focus on healing, ya lil' doof."

"No, you."

"Blake's right, this sounds like standard Ruby," Weiss joked.

"Well well well, someone made a Weisscrack," Yang said dryly.

Ruby giggled. "Weisscrack. Hehehe. It's like wisecrack… but… Weiss."

Yang patted the side of her head. "Good job, Ruby. You done figured it out."

"Hehe, thanks."

The pecking noise stopped and the angry chicken gave one more angry squawk at them, then whooshed away.

"I guess we're hanging out here for a bit?" Blake concluded.

"Guess so," Yang answered. "Weiss, can you make another wall on the other side? This cave goes way too deep for me to be comfortable with us just sittin' here."

"I… I'd _prefer_ to save my Dust, if possible? We still have two Nevermores to deal with and a long journey after that."

"If we had some light, Weiss and I could check it out and make sure we're alone," Blake offered.

"That sounds dangerous," Weiss said.

"Only if we're not alone," Blake countered. "And if that's the case, wouldn't you want to know?"

"Aaaalieeeeens," Ruby added.

There was a brief pause during which Ruby was pretty sure Weiss audibly rolled her eyes. "I'd _want_ to not be wandering around in a dark, creepy Grimm cave," Weiss answered. "But… you're right. It's a moot point though because we don't have a light source."

"Did none of you bring any white Dust crystals?" the professor asked.

There was a long silence as Ruby's teammates all looked at each other.

"Ooooh, yer in troooubllle!" Ruby taunted.

"Shush, Ruby," Yang told her. "Keep healing."

Oh right, her aura. Ruby started focusing really hard on amplifying the aura to her arm.

Wait, why her arm? Was there something wrong with her arm?

She double checked. They were both still there. Could aura grow an arm back? Maybe she should test that.

But wait, if her arm was okay, what was she supposed to be auraing? What had Yang said?... 'That empty head of yours'?

Haha! Her head.

She started focusing her aura to her head.

"In the future, you should each have at least one white Dust crystal with you," Professor GlobbyWoop lectured. "The likelihood that you encounter a Grimm pool while you're out in the field is decently high and you should always have a means to destroy it… Also, it would be helpful to have a light source at a time like this."

"... Sorry, Professor," Weiss eventually said for them.

"Don't worry, girls. This is part of learning. All that being said, I brought a couple crystals with me, should you like to use one here."

There was another pause, then Blake said, "Whadaya say, Weiss? Want to do some scouting with me?"

"... Sure?" she answered, sound super duper not confident.

"We could always just make another ice wall," Yang grumbled.

"We do not kneel!" Ruby chirped.

"Aren't you a little curious what's in here?" Blake asked.

"No?" Yang replied incredulously. "It's a fucking cave, Blake. It'll have cave shit in it."

"_Language_, Miss Xiao Long."

"If there was anything lurking in this cave, I would have heard it by now, Yang. Relax. I just wanna look around. You're welcome to come with me if you want to leave Weiss with Ruby."

"I'm _not_ leaving my sister."

"Alright," Weiss interrupted. "How confident are you that nothing's in here, Blake?"

"Unless there's a random Stalker lurking in here, one hundred percent."

"Kitty!" Ruby chimed in. "Bring a yernball."

"I-is that a thing, Professor?" Weiss asked. "Do Stalkers live in caves?"

"Not so far as I'm aware," she answered.

"Okay… Okay, let's do it," Weiss said, this time with conviction. "Scouting mission."

"You two are supposed to be the careful ones," Yang muttered.

"We _are_," Blake said. "Which is why we'll be fine."

"Whatever," Yang grumbled.

"We'll be back in a bit, Yang, promise," Blake said, walking over to give Yang's shoulder a squeeze.

"Could you go with them, Professor?" Yang asked.

"Hm… A useless civilian wouldn't really go trekking deep into a Grimm cave to scout with you, but… I suppose here it's a bit more appropriate. Yes, I'll accompany them."

Yang heaved a sigh of relief. "Okay, good."

"Useless!" Ruby cheered.

"Get going, I suppose," Yang said begrudgingly. "Before Ruby's head clears up and she freaks the frack out that you guys wandered off into the dark like a couple of idiots."

"Like you two, you mean?" Weiss quipped.

"I will totally smack you upside the head, Ice Queen."

"Aaaaand we're leaving now."

"Have a good trip!" Ruby called out with a lazy wave.

"Ruby?" Yang said as their three companions all got ready to leave.

"Hm?"

"Shudup."

"Okie."

* * *

**Aight, so I went ham and wrote this chapter in two days. Idk why. It was really fun. **

**Hope you guys enjoyed Ruby being epic. :3**

**Shout out to my preaders (pre-readers xD). We're also getting close to 50k views, which seems so nuts to me. I still can't believe anyone actually enjoys my idiocy. Thank you everyone for reading! It means a lot that you've stuck with me through all this nonsense. **

**Also, #prequelmemes LAWL! For anyone that got the reference in this chapter, "Hello there!" **


	32. Hunting 3-4

"Yang-uh! Yer hurr's ticklin' mah noooose!" Ruby the Absolute Dolt cried out in dismay behind them.

Muted by the ice wall, the Nevermores screeched, reminding them what was waiting for them outside.

Weiss, having finished reloading her spent Dust canisters, gave the cylinder of Myrtenaster a quick whirl, enjoying the *click click click!* of the mechanisms before flicking the cylinder back into the hilt.

Next to her, Blake was already creeping forward, eagerly squinting ahead to look around before Professor Goodwitch had even given them some light to work with.

"There's a draft coming from over here," she said. "Come on!"

Was there? Weiss held her hand out in Blake's direction to see if she could feel anything… Huh, there really was a slight, warm breeze. Coming from deeper in the cave. That's not ominous at all.

"One moment, Miss Belladonna," the professor requested. "I don't fancy stumbling about in the dark." She pulled a white crystal from her belt, held it in a clenched fist where it slowly began to glow, then crushed it.

The shards of the crystal evaporated as the professor's aura released the magic held within. Three balls of light, so brightly contrasting the darkness they were in that Weiss had to shield her eyes, drifted out from her hand. One went to float above Blake's head, one above Weiss, and the last hovered lazily above Professor Goodwitch.

"Waaah, tiny suns!" Ruby whined.

Weiss' intellectual curiosity was piqued by this. She hadn't used white Dust all that much, so seeing it used in this way was fascinating. Unfortunately, she couldn't really examine any of the balls of light because they were, well, really bright.

Even as she thought that, Professor Goodwitch let out a thoughtful "Hmm" and the orbs dimmed a bit.

"Do they follow us?" Blake asked, taking steps from side to side to test her own question. The orb followed her after a short delay, but then didn't pursue her as she stepped back.

"They move where I will them to," the professor answered. "Stay in front of me so I can keep track of you, please."

"Yes, ma'am," Weiss responded instinctively. "Is that… how difficult is that to maintain?" she asked. She should probably learn this trick.

"Oh, it's fairly simple. I'm quite sure you could manage it," the professor answered, the praise making Weiss smile and straighten up a little. "Unfortunately, light Dust affinity isn't really something we can measure like we can for the other Dust types, but I should expect controlling it wouldn't be any difficulty for you."

"Yang, our scrolls are localized, right?" Blake asked, pulling her scroll out to check.

"Should be, yeah."

"Weiss, your personal signal's on too, yeah?"

"Of course," Weiss answered. Pretty much the only reason for anyone to continuously upgrade to new scroll models like Weiss constantly did was to get the improved self-signal. Well, that and the better cameras, though Weiss hardly used those. Though she probably should. The SDC PR team constantly nagged her to use social media to promote the company. Apparently a pretty girl taking selfies was good publicity. Somehow. Even though the way she looked had no relevance to the products they sold.

"Alright," Blake announced. "We'll stay in range of Yang's connection. Yang, we'll be back in ten minutes. If we're not, we'll send you a message so you know we're alright. If you need us to come back for any reason, just let us know."

"We'll be okay," Yang said, still sounding dejected. She glanced at the wall of ice Weiss had erected to shut the Nevermores out-and them in. "As long as the Nevermores don't break the wall," she amended. "I'll kick their asses if they do, obviously, but it'll be hard to do that and protect Ruby."

"Chickens!" Ruby chirped.

"I thought I told you to shush," Yang grumped down at the bozo in her arms.

"Nuh-uh," Ruby responded.

"I definitely did."

"I don't 'member that."

"Shush."

"Okie."

Yang turned back to them. "Ten minutes," she stressed. Weiss rolled her eyes, now annoyed by Yang's pushiness. "Otherwise I'm gonna come after you and use Weiss' arms to beat the crap out of Blake and vice versa."

"That's rude," Weiss huffed.

"She's just worried about us," Blake assured her.

"I'm not worried!" Yang exclaimed, not at all convincingly. "Just… ya'll suck and I don't want you to get your asses kicked 'cause I'm not there to wreck the baddies for you."

"Jab jab punch!" Ruby added, flinging her arms around a bit.

"What happened to us being badasses?" Blake asked archly.

Yang blinked. "Uh… it's contiguous on me being there, duh."

"... What?" Weiss asked.

"I think she meant contingent," Blake clarified for her.

"Ah. Professor, is there a remedial Valish Studies course we can put these two in so they can figure out what words are?"

Professor Goodwitch's lips twitched. "They're more than welcome to enroll in a VCU course as long as it doesn't conflict with their Beacon class schedule."

"Hey!" Yang protested. "We don't… those were basically the same words anyway! Conting… y? What was it?"

"Contingent," Blake answered patiently.

"Contingent. Right."

"Wooooords," Ruby said, wiggling her fingers at Yang's face like she was a spooky ghost before she broke out into little giggles. "A, B, C, D, LMNOP!" she sang.

Yang snorted out a laugh. "I don't think that's right, Peanut."

"Yuh-huh!"

"Come on," Weiss decided. "I can feel my brain cells dying listening to her."

Blake laughed lightly. "Be right back!" she called back to Yang as she led the way forward.

Weiss wasn't really mad at Ruby for her concussed rambles-in fact they were kind of adorable. But she was mad at Ruby for getting concussed in the first place because she was being an idiot trying to do an action movie move. The sheer immaturity of that being her priority in that moment when she was being attacked by two Nevermores… Bah! Weiss wanted to yell at her and make sure she was okay at the same time.

So she was settling on leaving.

The cave, now that Weiss could see it properly with the professor's lights, was much wider and went far deeper than Weiss had thought it did. No wonder so many Grimm were able to fit in here.

Blake led them to the southern wall and began tracing a path alongside it, running her hands across the stone.

They walked for a couple minutes in silence, Weiss keenly aware of the noise their footsteps and breathing-especially her own-was making.

Then the smell hit Weiss. A really, really gross smell, another reminder that this was a cave that had been inhabited by wild killer monsters.

"That's really gross," Blake groaned, putting a hand to her nose.

"That's an understatement," Weiss agreed.

She knew from their studies that the smell was mostly rot from the carcasses the Grimm had eaten. For whatever reason, Grimm didn't have any waste. There were no definitive answers as to why or how beyond "It's a result of the Grimm transformation." The way Grimm decomposed after death made dissection impossible and live biopsies were unfortunately unmanageable. Grimm didn't sleep, nor did they react to drugs that would render them so.

Grimm were abnormalities in pretty much every way.

"It would seem these Grimm have been eating quite a bit," Professor Goodwitch observed as they got into view of the decaying remains of the Grimm's kills, pressing the back of single finger against her nostrils, her face skewed ever so slightly in disgust. "Many of these are fresh."

There were skeletons everywhere: deer, bears, some small jungle cats. Their skin had been ripped apart savagely, pelts strewn every which way around the bodies, and several still had meat on their bones, flies buzzing around the chunks of rotting flesh.

Disgusting.

"That's unusual, right?" Blake asked.

"Yes," Weiss answered. "Grimm hardly need to eat." The Nevermores had been eating too… Weiss looked to her professor. "Does this mean something? Is it bad?"

Professor Goodwitch shook her head slowly. "Grimm often go through cycles of heightened aggression. There are theories on why and what they might be related to-moon cycles, solar cycles, seasonal cycles, et cetera. None quite seem to match the measured patterns, though. Outlying villages will need to be more alert than normal, but other than that it should not affect anything. Other than your Hunts likely being a bit more dangerous, of course."

"Of course," Weiss said dryly.

"Hey, I found it!" Blake exclaimed excitedly, the sudden noise startling Weiss. She rushed forward a feet feet, her orb of light speeding up to stay with her after a short delay, then stopped, inspecting what looked like a deep shadow on the wall from where Weiss was.

"What is it?" she asked, walking over. It was a stupid question, though, because as she got closer she realized it wasn't a shadow, it was a crack. One that ran most of the way up the wall and seemed to go several feet deep before ending. It was jagged, the width varying anywhere from one foot to four.

Weiss definitely felt the draft coming from here, but how, if it was just a divot in the wall? The crack extended down to the floor and then seemed to trace a line across the cavern to the far wall.

"Look," Blake said as Weiss joined her, pointing up.

'... Oh.'

The crack went up.

"Well, that's a shame," she sighed.

Blake frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

Weiss gestured upwards, where the pseudo-tunnel created by the crack in the wall trailed off into darkness. "I know you were curious about where this led…"

"Yeah, and we can still check it out…" Blake said slowly.

"How?"

Blake blinked at Weiss. "We could climb?" she said slowly like Weiss was having a Ruby moment.

"What? Oh! Wha-no!" There was no way Weiss was climbing up there! That would be… so much physical exertion, and her clothes would get dirty, and it would be so claustrophobic…

"C'mon," Blake urged her. "Maybe it leads to a way out of here we could use. Once Ruby's better, maybe you and Yang go out the way we came in and distract them and Ruby and I could sneak out the top of this cave and jump on them… or something."

"Uh huh," Weiss intoned, unconvinced.

"It could be neat!" Blake tried again. "The breeze is carrying the scent of water; maybe there's an underground river or something here."

Weiss frowned, sniffing. "I don't smell water."

Blake rolled her eyes, an expression that looked disturbingly creepy in the stark white light they were in. "Well I do, trust me. If you're worried about getting stuck or something, I'll go first and figure out a way up, 'kay?"

Alright, time to try a different tack. Weiss turned to Professor Goodwitch. "Professor, do you want to go climbing up a dark, potentially damp tunnel in a cave?"

The professor quirked an eyebrow at her. "I'm here to follow you girls. If you choose to climb up this… hole… then I will of course follow." Her tone didn't sound all that enthusiastic, though.

"But you don't want to," Weiss reinforced.

"What I want is irrelevant, Miss Schnee. You should work this out with your teammate."

Weiss scowled and turned back to Blake, who looked at her hopefully. Weiss wasn't sure what to make of this… almost child-like curiosity, but…

Well, she really wanted to try to fix things with Blake. If crawling around in a hole was the price for that, then she supposed she'd be willing to pay it.

Although maybe she'd make Blake pay for the drycleaning.

Actually, maybe she'd just burn her clothes after today. They'd been Grimm gunked earlier too.

She really liked this outfit though…

"So?" Blake prompted her.

Weiss sighed. "Fine. Lead the way."

Blake nodded happily, then turned to Professor Goodwitch. "Are you sure you'll be able to follow us, ma'am?"

"I can assure you, Miss Belladonna, I'm quite capable of going wherever you can."

"I-I just meant that, um, you're pretty tall," Blake stammered quickly.

Professor Goodwitch smiled lightly. "I'll manage."

"Okay," Blake said nervously before turning back to the crack. "... Up we go…"

She started up, grunts of exertion occasionally escaping her as she climbed. The variance in the rock meant that a lot of her progress had to go inward before it could go upward, the path she traced winding left and right as much as it went up.

Professor Goodwitch directed her orb to hover constantly a bit to Blake's side so she wasn't blinded as she searched for handholds above her.

Weiss waited until Blake got a good few feet up before she started to follow.

Climbing was about as awful as Weiss had expected it to be. Pulling herself up was incredibly difficult, her arms straining and shaking with the effort. Jagged protrusions of stone constantly pinched her as she moved, her aura the only thing stopping them from cutting into her skin.

The claustrophobia was debilitating.

Her muscles were burning, her biceps and triceps trembling already after just a few feet of climbing. "I c-can't… I'm not strong enough for this!" she called up to Blake.

Blake leaned over her shoulder to look down at her. "Push with your legs! Just get a handhold to guide yourself, then move up by pushing with your legs, not pulling with your arms."

That… sounded like it made sense. She tried doing that and… yes, that was much easier.

A couple minutes later, Weiss pushed herself to the side a little too far and ended up with her rib cage and thigh getting pinched painfully by unyielding stone.

It took a moment for her to realize what happened, then panic started to set in.

'I'm stuck.'

Unbidden, thoughts of being trapped here in this dark hole forever started to swarm to the front of her mind. Her breathing quickened and turned shallow, resulting in an even worse continuous pain as her chest expanded and contracted rapidly into the rocks around her.

'Not like this. Please, not like this.'

She tried pushing herself up with all her strength but that just served jam her even more tightly into the pinch.

She meant to call for help, but the terrified noise that escaped her throat was little more than a ragged groan.

"Weiss?" Blake said from a few feet above her. "You alright?"

Unable to form words, Weiss quickly shook her head. "S-stuck," she gasped.

Was the stone crushing her? It felt like it was pressing in on her more and more. She was going to die here, stuck in some random fucking cave in the wilderness. A Schnee wasn't supposed to live in obscurity, and here she was dying in it.

"-hear me? Weiss!"

"W-what?" Weiss stammered, jerking back to reality at Blake's shout.

Blake moved down a bit closer to Weiss a couple feet, then extended a foot down and tapped the stone near Weiss' right hand. "Lean your right shoulder forward and twist counterclockwise a bit."

After a few quick gasps as Weiss struggled to understand the instructions through her panic, she obeyed, twisting her shoulder forward.

She felt the squeeze of the stone on the left side of her ribcage lessen and she was somewhat able to shift out. The gasp of relief that she gave was followed by several deep, heaving pants ans she realized she could breath again.

But…

"My leg!" she wailed, trying to jerk her left leg out from the stone where it was still trapped.

"Sshh, stop stop stop," Blake said gently, moving a bit to the side to try to peer down and see Weiss' leg for herself. "Relax. Okay, same thing. Rotate your hips a bit counterclockwise and try to twist your leg. You've got the thickest part of your thigh pinched, you just need to turn a bit and you'll be able to slide out."

Weiss blinked rapidly, still panting. That… made sense. Okay. Okay okay okay.

She tried to twist her hips forward.

It didn't work. The rock in front of her waist was pressed in too close for her to get any movement.

"I can't!" she cried out, her breathing picking up pace again.

"Weiss, breathe,": Blake urged her. "Hey, WEISS!"

Weiss jerked her head up at Blake's volume.

Blake gave her a brief smile. "Hey. Don't freeze up. You can get out of this. Slow your breathing. Relax."

Slowly, Weiss' breathing slowed down, the gradual lessening of physical reaction making her mental panic start to fade as well. She was still absolutely terrified of getting stuck here forever, but the idea felt more far away than it had when she'd been panting for tiny breaths.

"Okay, good," Blake said after Weiss had calmed. "Now I want you to take your left foot and point the toes down."

Weiss looked up at her quizzically.

"Trust me," Blake encouraged her.

Weiss nodded. Of course. Blake was trying to help, and she clearly knew what she was doing when it came to this sort of thing.

"Okay," she agreed, her voice a hoarse whisper.

She pushed her toes down.

"Push them down as far as you can," Blake directed. "Enough that your calf starts to hurt from the stretching."

"Definitely there," Weiss grimaced, the pain shooting up the muscles of her calf.

"Okay, now try to push your hips down, but keep your right foot where it is."

"U-um, okay."

Weiss did as Blake said and, after a moment of nothing changing, the left half of her body jerked down a couple inches, the pressure on her thigh lessening a bit as it shifted away from whatever narrow pinch in the rock it had gotten stuck in.

"Nice. Now do what I said before: rotate your hips and slide out."

Weiss did, relief flooding her system like a euphoric drug as her leg was dislodged.

"F-fuuuuh…. Thank you," she sighed, resting her forehead against the stone in front of her.

"Of course," Blake responded. "Wanna take a moment?"

Weiss took a deep breath, shifting a bit so she didn't have to rely so much on her shaking arms to keep herself upright. "I want to get out of this hole."

Blake let out a soft chuckle. "Fair enough. Follow me. And do better this time! I never went and got myself stuck, I dunno why you thought that would be a good idea."

Weiss rolled her eyes at the tease. "Clearly I misevaluated," she replied sardonically.

Blake gave another quiet laugh, then resumed the climb.

This time, though, Weiss did make a point of following Blake more exactly, watching her teammate closely so she could use all the same hand and footholds.

Below her, Professor Goodwitch didn't seem to be having any problems following, only letting out some disgruntled sighs every once in a while. And…

"Are you floating, Professor?" Weiss asked incredulously when she noticed that the woman moved up a few feet to a new handhold without any apparent physical motion.

"I am, yes," she answered simply. "I just ironed this shirt the other night. I'd like to not have to do that again so soon."

"B-but how?" Blake sputtered, following Weiss' gaze.

The professor blinked at them. "My semblance is telekinesis. I'm simply lifting myself by moving my clothes."

"Wait," Weiss said, realizing something. "Wait, so you're just like Pyrrha but more powerful?" That seemed… unfair. If the professor's semblance was just straight telekinesis, that meant she could do all the same things Pyrrha did but with more than just metal.

"I cannot apply the same amount of force or speed to objects as Miss Nikos, nor do I have her range. But yes, they are similar semblances. There are many semblances out there that are alternates or subsets of others."

"Like what?" Blake asked curiously.

"I know you are both intellectually curious individuals and I quite respect that," the professor replied, "but perhaps this discussion can wait until after we get out of this ridiculous hole?"

Weiss laughed at that, both the compliment and the professor's kindred grumpiness with the situation lightening her mood.

"Yeah, that would make sense," Blake said before continuing to lead the way.

The rest of the almost five minutes of climbing was more and more gruelling physically, though Weiss' confidence grew steadily with it as she got more practice.

"It flattens out a bit here!" Blake called down. "I think we'll be able to walk."

"Oh, thank the Light," Weiss grumbled. This was far too much physical exercise for Weiss' taste.

The tunnel did indeed flatten out, a rough, thin carving that ran horizontally through the rock. Unfortunately, it didn't get any wider, so they had to shuffle sideways down the passage instead of walking straight.

"This must have used to be a waterflow of some sort," Blake observed, grunting as she pushed herself through a tight spot. "The water eroded this little tunnel. Did you see the line on the floor of the cave back there? It would have been a little river running through. This place was probably a really nice place for animals to live at some point. Maybe even people."

"I did see that," Weiss answered. "I wonder why the water isn't flowing anymore."

"Dunno," Blake said. "But I can smell it close by."

"If we end up climbing into a river or something, I'm going to be very cross," Weiss informed her teammate.

Blake snorted a laugh. "I don't think it works that way."

"Well… just be aware. As Ruby would say, I'd be grumpy-grumps."

Blake laughed again, openly and loudly this time.

Finally, the tunnel opened up. Blake exited with a sigh of relief, Weiss following only a few seconds behind.

As soon as she was free of the confines of the tunnel, Weiss immediately began dusting herself off and running her fingers through her ponytail to make sure it was intact. Then, satisfied that all was well, she leaned forward and put her hands on her knees, catching her breath and letting her muscles relax.

"Whoa," Blake said, making Weiss look up.

The tunnel had led them out to what seemed like a small overlook raised about five feet from the ground. In front of them…

It was another cave, but this one was very, very different. There was a hole in the roof where sunlight was pouring through down into the center, and the center of the cave looked like an oasis. Grass, small plants and flowers (yellows, whites, oranges), and a small pond that was being fed by a thin waterfall falling from the hole in the roof. A few thin streams flowed out from the river to get lost in the rock walls of the cavern.

And in the middle of the pond, rising up like an island, was a statue.

It was a white marble depiction of the Goddess of Light, her blindfold and an uncommon tiara the only spots of color, a muted gold. It was in pristine condition and standing a good eight feet above the pond, with a couple of feet extending below the surface. One hand was held in front of her, palm upturned, and above it floated a lantern that was slowly spinning, a ball of light that shifted between a gold and silver color in slow transitions sitting inside that looked similar to Professor Goodwitch's white Dust spheres.

"Ah," the professor said, dusting off her skirt.

"You know this place?" Blake asked, still looking around in wonder.

"... I know of it, I believe," the professor answered slowly.

"What is it?" Weiss asked, following Blake as she hopped down to the ground below. "How do you know about it?"

"It is a shrine to the Goddess of Light, clearly," Professor Goodwitch answered.

Weiss waited a long moment for the next part of the answer, but none seemed forthcoming. "And you know about it how?" she pressed. She looked back at the professor as she asked.

Professor Goodwitch adjusted her glasses a bit and slowed, no longer keeping pace with the two girls. "Ahem. I believe Professor Ozpin told me about it."

"How does he-"

"Also," the professor cut her off, "did you girls wish to continue our discussion about semblance relationships?"

Taken a bit aback, Weiss blinked at the change in topic.

"Sure!" Blake answered. "But first, what's holding this lantern up?" she asked, breaking into a jog, running up to a foot away from the edge of the pool, where she stopped to glare at the water briefly.

"Dust, I would presume," Weiss answered, joining her teammate by the water.

"I don't see any. Do you?"

Weiss frowned and squinted, inspecting the sculpted marble hand, its empty upturned palm, and the bottom of the lantern floating above it.

"... No, but then it must be inside the lantern, right?"

Blake tilted her head side to side in consideration. "But it looks like there's white Dust in there to make the light, right?"

Weiss looked from the lantern, its shifting gold-silver-gold-silver radiance, to the globes of white light the Professor had circling her. "It's the wrong color for that, though," she noted.

Blake followed her gaze. "Huh, yeah… Can you give us some glyphs to get closer? I don't really like water."

Nodding, Weiss quickly obliged, creating a bridge of white glyphs hovering above the water that led up to the statue in the pond's center.

"I'm not certain this is the best idea, girls," Professor Goodwitch cautioned.

"It's a statue, Professor. It won't do anything to us," Blake argued.

"Maybe it'll come alive and attack us," Weiss joked. Although with all the weirdness of this scene, maybe that really was a possibility…

"Ruby, did you dye your hair?" Blake grinned at her, prompting Weiss to roll her eyes and lead the way up to the statue.

"We found an exit to this cave. We should head back to your teammates, don't you think?" the professor reminded them. "It would be best to leave them alone as little as possible, especially considering one of them is delirious."

"Ruby's always delirious, they'll be fine," Blake dismissed the professor's concerns, not even turning as she continued up to the statue.

Together, Weiss and Blake stopped on the last glyph, looking up at the pristine statue from only a few feet away.

"It's so pretty," Weiss commented.

It was. Clean, pure white marble-way too clean considering it was just sitting here in the wilderness-and it seemed to radiate a soothing light. The carving itself was immaculate, simple yet flawless, and there were even incredibly fine details on things like the edge of the blindfold and the tiara.

The tiara was somewhat unusual to see. The Lady of Light was always depicted blindfolded, sometimes hooded, sometimes not. Weiss couldn't recall a time when she'd seen Her depicted crowned, though.

"It really is," Blake agreed, appreciatively taking in the scene around them. "This whole place looks like it could've stepped out of a fairy tale."

"One of your books, maybe?" Weiss smiled.

Blake turned to her with a light laugh. "Ha! No, I like my stories a bit darker than a setting like this."

Weiss blinked at her, alarmed.

Blake shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a sucker for drama and angst."

"Should I be concerned?" Weiss asked.

"Naaah. It's not any weirder than being a sucker for science reports and writing out your teammates' weaknesses in a secret notebook."

"H-hey! I just want to be prepared!"

"For when your team goes supervillain and you have to have a big dramatic fight across the rooftops of Beacon?"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at Blake, who after a moment grinned and looked down at her toes. "I may have taken a peek at some of Ruby's comics," she confessed.

Weiss gave an exaggerated gasp. "Blake Belladonna!"

"What?! I like reading!... And the art looked nice."

"Did you tell Ruby?" Weiss asked.

Blake shook her head. "I figured that might invite a flood of nerdy, nonsensical conversations…"

"It most certainly would. Are you going to slowly descend into dolt-hood?"

Blake gave an innocent shrug. "Dunno. Could be fun. You should try it."

To that, Weiss gave her best deadpan.

Another shrug from Blake. "Just a suggestion… What do you think of this?" she asked, nodding her head toward the statue.

"It's beautiful," Weiss answered. "Surprisingly clean."

"Mm," Blake agreed. "Does it look like it's glowing to you?"

"I think so. I thought maybe it's just… reflective?"

Now it was Blake's turn to raise an eyebrow at her.

Weiss narrowed her eyes, trying to glare back defiantly, but… it was a silly idea. She broke first. "I don't know!" she exclaimed, waving her arms a bit. Yang would be proud.

Blake turned back to the statue, eyeing the glowing lantern floating in the goddess' palm. "Maybe this is one of those unexplainable magic locations, like the Forever Falls or the Maelstrom."

An interesting thought, but… "But this has to have been made by someone, right? All of the Anomalies are natural phenomena."

Blake frowned dubiously. "I mean… they're magic. There's nothing natural about them."

"... Fair," Weiss acquiesced. "Still, it's very… different."

"Yeah," Blake sighed. She turned around. "Hey, Professor? What has Professor Ozpin said about this place?"

Professor Goodwitch cleared her throat. "Just that it exists. Now, shall we be getting back to your team?"

"Oh, crap!" Blake suddenly exclaimed, scrambling to pull out her scroll.

"What?!" Weiss cried, worried at the sudden change in tone.

"How long has it-phew!" Blake relaxed a bit as she looked at her scroll screen. "Only eight minutes." She typed out a quick message. "Letting Yang know we're alright," she explained.

"Ah. Right." That had slipped Weiss' mind. "Don't flip out like that! You scared me! It's Yang, she's not actually going to beat us up with our own limbs…. I think… She's not that violent."

"She's not violent, Weiss," Blake said disapprovingly. "She's just… not clingy, that's not the right word. She's… very devoted to the people she cares about."

"Aggressively so."

Blake shrugged. "I think she just really doesn't want to lose people. Pretty sure she's got some abandonment issues."

Weiss frowned. Yang was an attacker, someone that seemingly charged at every problem. Saying she had abandonment issues felt like that made her… weak. Yang was many things-dumb, impulsive, admittedly funny (though Weiss would never admit that out loud) to name a few-but weak was not one of them.

"Why would you say that?" she asked.

The look Blake gave her was unimpressed. "C'mon, Weiss, you're smart. Her mom walked out on her when she was a toddler. And her second mom walked out and never came home a few years later. Did you see her totally freak out back there when Ruby stayed behind to fight the Nevermores? And how she couldn't string coherent words together until we saw Ruby again?"

"Are you suggesting incoherence is abnormal for her?"

"Seriously, Weiss," Blake said, still disapprovingly. "You can joke about how she can be a little dense sometimes, but at least take her wanting us to not disappear on her seriously."

The chastisement made Weiss recoil a bit. Her first inclination was fire back with something like 'I'll take whatever I want to seriously, thank you very much', but… that would be the kind of response that would make Ruby mad at her for "being a meanie". And… she supposed Blake was right, if she thought about it for a second. Yang wanting to protect her team wasn't really a bad thing. In fact, it was good, right?

"... Alright, sorry," Weiss conceded. "You're right." It felt weird making such an admission.

Blake tilted her head quizzically, giving Weiss a funny look that turned into a small smile after a moment. Her scroll beeped then and she looked down to read Yang's reply, snorting a laugh once she did.

"She says 'pic or it didn't happen'," she relayed to Weiss.

That actually was a pretty good idea. This place was gorgeous-a picture of it would definitely be nice to have. Maybe Weiss could use it as a reference for a painting.

"I think we can provide that," she replied, making another trail of glyphs to get back to the edge of the pond. The water below her was so crystal clear she could count the smooth pebbles at the bottom, and her curious reflection blinked back up at her, flawless but for the ripples from the flow of the gently running current.

She could get pictures from multiple angles, too. There were probably a few shots of the lamp that she-

"Girls, stop."

Weiss turned to the professor in surprise. "What? I just wanted a couple pictures."

"No, I mean stay still, stay silent."

That's when Weiss realized Professor Goodwitch wasn't looking at either of them, but rather at something past her head. She turned to follow the woman's gaze.

Past the shaft of light beaming down from above, there was just the typical expected darkness of the cave that extended all the way to the walls of the cavern a good eighty feet away. It looked empty. There wasn't anything to be alarmed about… was there?

"What…?" she muttered, squinting to see into the dar-

"Oh… shit."

Weiss glanced at Blake at the girl's exclamation. She was looking in the same direction Weiss had been… oh but up.

She followed her teammate's gaze to the ceiling of the cavern. It was still dark up there too, though, save for the beam of light coming from-

Something moved.

Weiss immediately froze up, her muscles tensing to a point where she couldn't voluntarily move them. Her breathing shallowed and quickened.

Long lines clustered together… legs. As her eyes focused a bit more, Weiss was able to discern the reflective surface of eyes.

… Eight of them.

'Weaver.'

It was huge. Close in length to an eighteen wheeler and much wider, and that didn't even account for the span of the legs. It was edging slowly sideways on what must have been a massive web, though the silk lines were too fine and too poorly illuminated for Weiss to make it out from here.

The professor's voice dimly reached Weiss' ears, but it sounded muffled and distant compared to her heartbeat.

Then there was more movement to the side of the monster.

More Weavers.

There were Grimm spiders moving up to join that gargantuan one, dozens of smaller-but still terrifyingly large-arachnids all inching forward (though for creatures of that size, 'inching' carried them several feet at a time).

And they were all looking down at Weiss.

Another muted voice reached Weiss, this time Blake's. Again, Weiss couldn't understand what was being said, barely registered that anyone was even speaking.

"Weiss!" Blake hissed softly.

Weiss startled, only sheer terror of the Hive above them keeping her from shrieking.

Blake was standing next to her now.

"Hey, don't panic," Blake said, the words not really doing anything to keep Weiss from not panicking. How could she not panic? There was a fucking spider about a thousand times bigger than her currently getting into position to plummet down on her. "Did you hear what the professor said?"

Weiss shook her head.

"It's an Elder Weaver and its Hive," Professor Goodwitch said, presumably repeated. "We cannot win this fight. We need to get back to the crevasse now."

Weiss gulped and nodded slowly.

"Miss Schnee, I'm going to need you to launch yourself and Miss Belladonna as far as you can toward the rise when I say 'go', understand?"

Weiss nodded again.

"They will try to jump on top of you, so keep moving forward as fast as you can and you should be able to outrace them."

'Should?'

"They can see in the dark, but their actual perception is not the greatest. Miss Belladonna, your shadows may be useful distractions."

"Okay…" Blake responded, her voice full of the same terror and worry that Weiss felt right now.

"Alright, girls. Get ready. Move on 'go'. Three..."

Weiss tensed back up again, but Blake gave her shoulder a squeeze and that was enough to make herself focus on coiling her muscles to get ready to run.

"Two…"

Weiss wrapped her fingers around the hilt of Myrtenaster and drew it in one smooth motion. Beside her, Blake pulled her sword off her back and unsheathed it-and kept the sheath in her off hand to use as a weapon as well, of course, because she was weird like that.

"One…"

Weiss summoned one large white glyph underneath her and Blake's feet, then began compacting it, forcing the flourishes and lines of the glyph into tighter spaces to increase its intensity. The power built up enough that it was starting to strain Weiss' mind to keep the symbol together.

"Go!"

Releasing the built up energy in the glyph, Weiss launched herself and Blake backwards, towards the hole they'd climbed out of. They flew through the air together, Weiss turning in one long, slow backflip across the arc while Blake twisted around to keep watching the Weavers above them.

Weiss heard a hum as Professor Goodwitch launched some sort of Dust attack, and a moment later there was an explosion from the ceiling. Weavers let out a noise that sounded like a choking cat shrieking, followed by a shatteringly loud crash on the ground.

When her flip carried her back around to look below her, Weiss saw Professor Goodwitch had moved several feet to the side of where she'd been and in her place was the massive Elder Weaver, eyes glistening and red with hatred, armor plating along its back and legs stark white, its pincers buried in the ground. The stone where it had landed was cracked from the weight of the impact, the edge of the crater deforming the ground around the edge of the pool enough that water was rushing from the pool into the new indentation in the floor.

'Holy shit.'

The Professor flicked her riding crop across her body and crystals of Dust flowed off of her clothes. They stopped to hover in the air in front of her and she pushed out with her empty hand, the shards following the movement, lighting up and slamming into the side of the giant spider. To Weiss' complete lack of surprise, Professor Goodwitch was a talented enough Dust caster to be able to manipulate different types of Dust at the same time-the explosion that slammed into the Weaver had flashes of red and purple and pale green. Fire, gravity, air.

The Weaver rocked sideways, maintaining its balance on four legs for a brief moment before it collapsed, its legs crumpling from its own weight.

More were coming down, though, some simply jumping down like the Elder had, some streaming down on lines of silk. Dozens. Dozens upon dozens. There were some crawling out of holes in the walls, smaller ones that probably couldn't hurt them but would certainly slow them down.

To try to help the professor, Weiss sent three streams of ice at the Elder, each one crashing against and encasing the spider's legs in ice. The monstrosity let out a screech, a noise that sounded like it was trying to roar while gargling mouthwash. Then it jerked violently and the ice cracked, shattering like so much broken glass, not even significant in slowing the thing down as it scrambled to its feet faster than Weiss could blink.

'We're going to die.'

Professor Goodwitch was running to them, moving remarkably fast, but there were so, so many spiders. One smaller Weaver landed on her back and she stumbled to the side. Blake, backpedaling, shot a volley of rounds from her auto-pistol at the creature and it fell, allowing the professor to stand.

Two more medium sized Weavers both jumped from behind her, overshot, streams of silk trailing from their disgusting abdomens to drape over her. She saw them, though, and waved a hand, drawing Dust from her sleeve to create a line of fire above her that disintegrated the webs as the fell.

The Elder Weaver was up now and it jumped forward, and with its massive size the jump meant it cleared half the cavern to slam into the wall above the crack in the rock Weiss and Blake were running toward.

They both screamed, stumbling back as the massive thing turned itself to cling to the wall facing upside down, its massive, beady eyes boring into theirs.

'This is it. What the hell am I doing here?'

What was one little Weiss supposed to do against a massive, ancient evil like this? What was any person supposed to do against this? They had no business being here.

From behind them, the three lights Professor Goodwitch was somehow still controlling flew forward, brightening to the point where even Weiss had to shield her eyes. The Elder Weaver hissed as the miniature suns forced themselves in front of its eyes and it scurried backwards up the wall, the freaky arms along the side of its head rearing up to try to block the light.

The other Weavers around them also seemed wary of the light, the ones that had swarmed the wall and ground around the crack backing away. Weiss took the opportunity to launch her and Blake the rest of the way to the rise in front of the hole. Blake continuously rained bullets down on the spiders beneath them as they flew. When they landed, she spent but a moment getting her feet under her before resuming her barrage, this time firing into the utter mob of monsters trying to swarm Professor Goodwitch.

The professor was holding her own, though. With a wave of her riding crop she conjured bolts of gravity from her clothes that speared out from her and slammed into spiders nearby, detonating with violent violet bursts that launched the enemies clear across the cave.

Weiss hadn't even realized gravity Dust could be used like that.

She sent her own spears of ice into the throng of monsters to help. They weren't nearly as effective against the bigger spiders as they'd been against the Beowolves, though, several of them shattering against white armor and doing nothing, or making the spiders jerk a bit if she was lucky. She used one Dust canister, two, but the lack of effect was dismaying.

Professor Goodwitch kicked forward, turning the movement into a graceful backwards cartwheel. From her foot, a purple wave arced out, carving a line through the clutter of spiders. There was a brief pause as the gravity wave stopped and hummed loudly, pulling monsters in towards it, then it exploded, one single detonation all the way across the twenty foot line that completely scattered everything within several yards. Apparently the force of the blast was enough to be lethal for some of the lesser insects, as several began decomposing before they'd even been reintroduced to the ground, and several more died after.

The professor didn't stop to admire her handiwork, though. She glanced up, her eyes went wide, and she quickly crouched down, winding up for a jump. Thin lines along her legs lit up green, a misty haze flowing from her stockings to envelope her calves and feet. When she jumped a blast of air Dust went off to empower it so she launched as high and far as Weiss' condensed Push glyph had sent her and Blake.

Just in time, too, as the Elder Weaver once again cometted down from the ceiling to where she'd just been standing, the earth itself cracking in protest.

The professor twirled in the air to face the gargantuan insect, reaching the peak of her flight and then stopping to float there. She raised her crop up into the air, then brought it down with a fast slash.

The orbs of light that were floating along the top of the cave-likely where the Elder had been before it jumped-turned into spears of blinding white that beamed down faster than Weiss' eyes could track, leaving lines in her vision. They lanced into the Elder Weaver's face and it let out a scream that shook Weiss to her very core.

Satisfied, Professor Goodwitch turned to Weiss and Blake and began floating down towardstoward them. Weiss could see what she'd meant about how she couldn't move things-including herself-as fast as Pyrrha, though, because she was descending pretty slowly.

"Weiss, help her!" Blake yelled, now shooting at the Elder Weaver's eyes.

'What?... Oh, right.'

After a moment figuring out how best to do it, Weiss summoned a line of black glyphs beneath the professor that lead to the rise. Seeing this, the Professor aimed herself down toward the nearest one and let herself get pulled. Before she could make it to the glyph and get stopped by it, Weiss dispersed it, the next one in the sequence taking over in pulling the professor down. In this way Weiss escalatored Professor Goodwitch down to them in a matter of seconds.

The huntress hit the ground running and pushed Weiss and Blake forcefully toward the crevasse. "GO!" she shouted, her usually calm, cool demeanor gone, though she was as commanding as always.

Peering down the dark tunnel that Weiss really didn't want to crawl through again-especially without Professor Goodwitch's Dustlights, she nodded to Blake to go first. Climbing down would probably be even more terrifying than climbing up had been and she really wanted to have Blake's lead to follow.

Blake nodded back at her, then plunged into the dark.

Weiss spared a glance back at the professor just as the woman pushed out towards the incoming horde of Weavers. Another wave of gravity Dust power radiated out from her, this time a wide cone that rushed out and blanketed the ground for almost fifty feet. She lifted her hands up, her empty hand upturned, and the violet smoke and all but the heaviest spiders that were enveloped by it rising up in the air in response. The small spiders that were levitated up scrambled their legs in vain to try to keep moving.

The Elder didn't seem impeded at all, though, and it seemed to have recovered from the blinding assault it had suffered. It rushed forward through the rising mist, not even noticeably slowed by the force of inverted gravity it was pushing through. Some of its larger spawn were similarly too heavy for the professor to move, but they did seem to be somewhat slowed as they joined the Elder in its headlong charge.

Professor Goodwitch swiped her hands down, the haze of purple obeying her command, slamming into the ground and bringing the smaller Weavers with it. The impact was enough to jar even the Elder, which stumbled slightly and slid, scrambling to get its legs underneath it again.

'Disgusting.'

"Weiss, wall!" the professor shouted, backing up as the monster resumed its blitzing rush.

Weiss immediately obeyed, clicking to get past her wind Dust to another ice canister, then conjured a massive wall of blue that cupped around the rise and pulled back toward the wall, enclosing them.

A brief sigh of relief escaped her but it turned into a scream as the Elder Weaver slammed into the wall. Its pincers pierced through the ice like it was paper, half of the disgusting mandibles puncturing into the inside of the space Weiss had created. The freaky "little" arms in its face scratched and scrabbled on the far side of the wall as the monster jerked its head and ripped the ice between its pincers away.

Once again the professor forcefully pushed Weiss towards the tunnel. "GO!" she shouted.

Weiss obeyed, terror pushing her forward as she turned herself sideways and threw herself into the darkness. If she hadn't been protected by her aura she would have been cut and bruised all over her body from how quickly and constantly she was bashing against the rocks.

Professor Goodwitch was immediately behind her, so close that their hands bumped. Sounds of the Elder screeching and tearing down the wall echoed deafeningly through the tunnel, making Weiss wince. When they were several feet in, the Professor gave Weiss another order.

"Seal the entrance!"

Weiss grunted as she jerked to a stop and turned back to the entrance. There was very dim light coming from the slit of an opening, though the Elder Weaver's constantly moving shape cast a frightening shadow over them in inconsistent rhythm. The left side of her body was facing the wrong way, so she had to twist her arm awkwardly over her head to point Myrtenaster toward the entrance, being careful to avoid hitting Professor Goodwitch as she sent a stream of ice over the woman's head. She willed the magic in the Dust to clog the entrance of the thin tunnel.

At first Weiss wasn't sure why this was necessary, but then she remembered all the tiny spiders that had crawled out of holes in the wall much smaller than this one.

This was a good call.

The professor watched the blue light arc over her. "Let go," she said.

Weiss didn't know what that meant. "What?" she asked, her voice feeling scratchy and uneven from the panic still pumping through her veins.

"Of the Dust. Let go of the Dust, Miss Schnee."

'Oh.'

Weiss pulled back on her aura that was infusing the Dust, the magic in it dulling as her will and spirit left. Through the weird pseudo-awareness of her aura that she had when it was beyond her body felt a pressure run against it as it retreated back to her. Then the Dust lit up again and Professor Goodwitch waved a hand slowly, the ice packing more and more compact into the entrance of the tunnel until the light was completely blocked. The ice might as well have been stone.

Total, utter darkness.

Weiss started to relax, her hammering heart starting to slow to a pace that wouldn't make it explode in her chest. She should have been terrified to be in the dark, but right now it felt like the blackness was something keeping the Grimm away. She wasn't even sure what had made her decide she was safe now until she realized that Professor Goodwitch had gone back to calling her Miss Schnee.

That Dust passing had been intriguing. She knew passing Dust control to someone else was a thing, but Weiss had never done it herself. It was technically even possible to take over someone else's Dust against their will, though that required an incredibly strong will and potent aura. Weiss had little doubt that the professor probably could have done so if she'd wanted, but it was nice that she'd been a part of it and voluntarily given up control. That weird pressure she'd "felt" must have been Professor Goodwitch's aura coming out to take over.

"I can't see!" Blake's voice sounded out up ahead, sounding dismayed and a bit scared.

"Yes, one moment," Professor Goodwitch said. Weiss heard some rustling, then a crystal of light started glowing in the huntress' hand. She crushed it like last time, then three familiar orbs of light appeared, too bright in comparison to the pitch darkness. Weiss had to turn away as Professor Goodwitch adjusted the brightness and sent the orbs out to individuals again.

On the other side of the barrier, the Elder Weaver's shrieks were audible as high pitched rumbles in the stone, but they quickly subside. There were light tapping noises as what Weiss presumed was the sound of dozens of spider legs against rock as the Hive scattered.

Hopefully they weren't finding another way to get in here.

"Let's join Miss Belladonna, shall we?" the professor suggested.

Weiss nodded numbly, not feeling the energy to form words in her shellshocked state. She started inching her way toward Blake, who was visible about fifteen feet ahead, close to where the drop was.

"Hey," Blake greeted them as they got close, sounding as exhausted as Weiss felt.

"Hi," Weiss replied, offering a smile.

"Are you ladies alright?" Professor Goodwitch asked.

"... Technically alive," Blake hedged.

"Mildly terrified," Weiss added.

The professor nodded sadly. "Do not let this encounter dismay you. You should not have had to meet such an enemy so early in your training."

"But we did," Weiss argued. "And there's a chance we could again, whenever we go out into the Wild, isn't there?"

The professor frowned, concerned. "Yes, though large scale threats like a full Hive are usually documented, so you'd know to watch out for them. And when you're stronger and more experienced you girls as a team should be able to easily escape such a situation."

Blake and Weiss looked at each other. The way Blake's eyebrows turned up in worry made Weiss think she wasn't totally convinced either.

That Elder Weaver had been… so far beyond them. What was one little human-or even four-supposed to do against something like that?

"I'm sorry," Professor Goodwitch said after the silence stretched condemningly. "I was given to understand that shrine should be safe. I should have been more wary."

"What do you mean?" Blake asked, asking the question on the tip of Weiss' tongue.

"... Professor Ozpin visits this place every few months. It is… dear to him. And he says that Grimm tend to be drawn to it, so when he visits he clears them out. His last visit was the week before the school year started. It is… concerning that such a host of Grimm could have grown here in a matter of weeks."

That… was a lot to process. "What does this place mean to the headmaster?" Weiss asked.

"... I don't know," she answered. "Perhaps it is just a quiet place he's grown fond of." She cleared her throat. "Now, shall we begin our descent? We should get back to your team as quickly as possible. I don't like the idea of those two being alone if there's a Hive crawling through the walls of this structure."

That thought was a shock of lightning through her veins. Ruby and Yang could be in trouble. She looked at Blake who'd pulled out her scroll and was already typing a message to Yang.

There was a brief silence, then Blake's scroll pinged as she received a response, Blake sighing in relief.

"She says they're good, and Ruby's mostly recovered."

Weiss let air back into her lungs at that. Good. They were okay. She'd feel absolutely… she didn't even know what she'd feel if the adorable dolt that was messing up her ABCs had gotten hurt because Weiss had wanted to help Blake satisfy her curiosity as an olive branch.

"I told her we're on our way back," Blake announced. She turned to Weiss. "You ready?"

Weiss sighed. Her arms and legs were still sore from the previous climb, and she couldn't shake the fear that buzzed just on the edge of her conscious thoughts that there might be Weavers crawling in the walls around them. She refused to ponder that situation to its conclusion.

"... No. Let's go."

Blake huffed at the humor lightly, then lead the way forward, a few feet of progress later leading them down. She tested each hand and foothold before putting her weight on it, the process slow and careful, something Weiss appreciated. Watching Blake carefully, Weiss did her best to follow the same path.

The climb down was long and arduous, and Weiss' guess that climbing down would be more terrifying than climbing up was right. Dangling a foot down and trying to find a spot for her to rest her weight was so… the looseness and lack of stability was scary, to say the least. And her movement not being lead by her hands, whose grip had given Weiss a much more secure feeling, just added to the feeling.

Thankfully, the descent was a little faster than the trip up, though it was more taxing on her arms than it had been before once Blake had told her to push with her legs. In this case, she had to hold up her weight with her arms and a single leg, and putting a lot of weight on a single leg was terrifying as it felt so flimsy to rely on her toes for grip.

About five minutes past, quiet save for the grunts of physical exertion they occasionally let out. Several times Weiss could have sworn she heard the tapping of spider legs in the rock around them, but the first time Blake assured her there was no such noise, and every time after Weiss eventually realized it was just in her head.

Finally, their feet touched solid ground again and even the professor seemed relieved.

"Well, I'm glad that ordeal is over," she muttered as she dusted off her skirt.

Weiss slumped against the wall and slid down it, her muscles giving out, her arms and legs somehow still shaking even after she was done using them.

She was going to be sore for weeks after this.

Luckily, her aura was doing its part in repairing the microtears in her muscles, so she should be ready to keep going in a few minutes, but right now she just needed a break.

Blake slid down beside her, shaking her arms and legs out before leaning her head back against the hard stone.

"... Mistakes were made," she sighed.

That got a chortle out of the professor, who stood patiently nearby, and Weiss smiled too. "Yes, it might have been best to not go up there," she agreed.

"But hey, we got to see that cool little oasis, Lady of the Lake thing!" Blake pushed.

Weiss nodded. "True, that was fascinating and gorgeous. Still not sure what it is, though, and I think the Elder Weaver soured that experience a bit."

"... Yeaaah," Blake sighed. "Did you manage to get a picture?"

Weiss shook her head sadly.

"Damn…. Well, we could ask Professor Ozpin about it!" She looked up at Professor Goodwitch at that, who raised an eyebrow and froze for a moment, thinking through a reply.

"You could, yes. On a different topic, as long as we're resting here, would you girls like to resume our discussion on semblances?"

Oh, right. Weiss had forgotten about that.

"Of course," she answered easily, Blake nodding in agreement. New knowledge was always something to welcome.

Professor Goodwitch nodded, looking pleased. Eager students were probably something teachers greatly enjoyed.

"So, as I mentioned earlier, there are many semblances that seem to be branches or subsets of others. Miss Nikos' semblance is very similar to mine, though narrower in scope but more palpable in application. There are many other examples of this; Miss Rose's semblance is very similar to her mother's, Miss Xiao Long's semblance is similar to Professor Rustheart's, we've heard that a new student in Vacuo that has a projection semblance a bit like yours, Miss Belladonna."

Blake's head perked up, her bow wiggling a bit with the movement. "What? Really? How so?"

"There is a young gentleman that can make golden duplicates of himself that fight with him, and he has some moderate control of their actions. These projections seem to be more solid then yours, so they're able to deliver hits and help him hound opponents."

"Awww," Blake let out dejectedly. "That's not fair!"

The professor held up a hand with a small smile. "He cannot, as far as I know, teleport to them like you can, nor use their creation to alter his own momentum like I've seen you do. And I'm given to understand that he cannot generate them at the rate you do, as the report we were given said that destroying the clones is a viable strategy when engaging him."

"Oh…" Blake said. "Well… I guess there's that."

"Quite," the professor replied sardonically.

"Are there any semblances like mine?" Weiss asked.

Professor Goodwitch tilted her head to the side, considering. "I know of some that are somewhat similar in function to your glyphs. And I've seen one that is likely a shard of your summoning ability. I've never seen one that combines them both, though, and I know of none that are hereditary. The Schnees are quite a conundrum."

"... I'm still not entirely sure I inherited the summoning ability," Weiss admitted sadly.

"I wouldn't be too hard on yourself about that," the professor comforted her. "I'm not sure entirely what the situation is, though Agent Schnee has expressed that she's confident you'll get past the block eventually, and I've found her to be an excellent judge of people and their capabilities."

Now it was Weiss' turn to perk up. "You know Winter?"

"Indeed," Professor Goodwitch said with a nod. "We've met several times… She does not bring up her personal life much, but when she does she always speaks fondly and highly of you."

The pride and happiness that those words gave Weiss was enough to completely obliterate any cognisance of the pain her body was in.

"Anyway," the professor moved on, "the point is that all these related semblances lends credence to the theory that our semblances all stem from a singular source. Whether it is a sentient source that gifted these abilities to us on purpose or by accident, or a natural source that has given us these powers simply by its nature, it is widely agreed that semblances all stem from a source with a wide range of powers that it was able to apply in different ways, both widely and specifically, and the semblances we've received are those wider or narrower applications in concentration."

Well… that was a lot.

"Is there a name to that theory?" Weiss asked. It would be interesting to read the evidence supporting it, all the different related semblances.

"Several different ones, and the different branches of theories on what the specific source are all have different names. The general theory falls under the umbrella of the Semblance Unification Theory. If you search that up it should lead you to all the other various, tedious differentiations."

"Awesome, thank you!" Weiss said enthusiastically.

"Of course. I'm always pleased to further the learning of my students. Now… shall we get back to your teammates?"

Weiss nodded, pushing herself to her feet, soreness mildly healed and completely forgotten. She had a lot to think about now.

This was exactly what she'd needed after the harrowing experience of getting swarmed by giant monster spiders: just a nice, intellectual conversation that helped expand her understanding of the world and her place in it, and it gave her some more reading and learning to look forward to later.

The wall of ice Weiss had created at the front of the cave was just a barely visible speck of blue from here, and it took a couple minutes of walking before they got back to Ruby and Yang.

Yang was leaning against the cave wall just beside the ice, probably to have some light, and Ruby was leaning against her sister's shoulder, her headphones on as she bobbed her head and sang along to her song.

Weiss hadn't even realized the dolt had brought her headphones. The revelation was sidelined by how impressed she was again with Ruby's singing; the girl was definitely singing from her throat instead of her diaphragm, but she seemed to be hitting the notes well. At least, it sounded good, though Weiss didn't know the song she was singing so she couldn't be one hundred percent sure.

The three of them approached with their footsteps and the soundtrack of Ruby's voice as the only two sounds in the vast cavern.

"... na na na gonna do now? / It's your reflection looking back to pull you dooown / So are you gonna die today or make it out alive? / You gotta conquer the monster in your head and then you'll fly / Fly, phoenix, fl-

Ruby jerked her head around as she noticed the swell of light from the professor's orbs illuminating the wall next to her. "Oh, hey guys!" she chirped, bouncing to her feet.

Just seeing how happy Ruby seemed to be despite everything going on made Weiss smile.

"Hello," she replied as Blake walked over to Yang and pulled her to her feet.

"Find anything neat?" Yang asked. She inspected Weiss and Blake for a moment, squinting suspiciously, then added, "Why do you two look so beat up?"

"Weaver," Blake sighed, the one word explanation seemingly all she could muster up.

Ruby giggled. "You guys got beat up by Weaver? You're lucky she wasn't in Skitter mode, ya'll woulda been smoked."

"... What?" Weiss asked.

"I meant we encountered a Weaver, Ruby," Blake said, somewhat impatiently. "You know, spider Grimm?"

"Oooooh…. That makes more sense."

"I thought you said she was recovered," Weiss said accusingly to Yang.

Yang snorted. "She is. This is just normal Rubes. You guys seriously fought a Weaver? Like, a big one? I thought they were hella tough."

"They are," Blake agreed. "It was an Elder Weaver and its entire Hive. We didn't fight, we just ran. There is no fighting that."

Yang tensed up. "A-are you guys okay?!" she blurted anxiously. "Why didn't you say anything when you messaged me?!"

"We're fine, Yang!" Blake quickly rushed out to settle the girl. "I messaged you when we'd gotten safely away and I didn't want you to worry."

Yang definitely looked worried.

"We're fine," Weiss reinforced. "They tried to swarm us and Professor Goodwitch was… well, pretty epic." She turned and gave a small smile to the professor and got one in return.

"Awww," Ruby lamented. "Professor Goodwitch fought and I didn't get to see it?! That sucks!"

"I knew I shouldn't have let you go without me!" Yang growled, apparently still stuck on that. "I could've been there to help! To… t-to-"

"You being there wouldn't have helped, Yang," Blake said gently. "If anything, you probably would've charged in recklessly and gotten yourself hurt."

"Better me than you," Yang snapped back.

The response made Blake blink and pause, not sure how to respond.

Professor Goodwitch cleared her throat. "Your desire to protect your teammates is admirable, Miss Xiao Long, but in this case they are correct. A Hive is not an enemy you can face, now. All that there was to be done was to retreat."

"Professor…" Blake said slowly, measuring her next words. "How… like, even when we're grown and trained, how are we supposed to be able to fight an enemy like that? More experience and aura wouldn't be enough to keep us from getting completely swarmed, would it?"

"No, indeed it would not. In this case, your experience would tell you to do what I told you to do-run. A single Elder Weaver is an enemy that I believe even now you girls could likely face, but a Hive? There are a handful of individuals in the world that could face such a foe. Engaging against such an enemy would usually be undertaken as a full scale military operation, if at all."

"What kinda epic powers does someone have to have to solo a Hive?" Ruby asked, eyes lighting up with excitement.

The professor paused for a moment. "... Not any we here possess. So, as I said, you should always flee if you encounter such a force. To put it into perspective, there is a Hive in southern Vacuo that has been documented for almost two centuries now. The Vacuan military tried to eliminate it some twenty-five years ago and were routed almost easily. They leave it alone now, with signs and barriers a couple miles around it to keep travellers from approaching. There was another Hive in Atlas that was cleared only a few years ago, and even the mighty Atlesian military suffered heavy losses in that battle."

"Wait, what?" Weiss asked. "I never even heard about that."

Professor Goodwitch raised an eyebrow. "Really? Curious."

"W-why is that curious?" Weiss asked, concerned.

"... You're just a very well informed individual, and from Atlas. I would have assumed you'd know about it. But James-General Ironwood, that is-did keep the story under wraps. He didn't want word getting around that there were Grimm out there that can contend with the modern Atlas military. He didn't want people to be afraid."

"... Oh. Right."

The professor clapped her hands together once. "Well, as much as I do appreciate the scenic view of a dark cave filled with corpses, I think it's time we pressed on, yes?"

… Crap.

They still had hours to go to get to their objective and Weiss felt tired and depleted as hell. She pulled out her scroll to check myAura…

Not great. Not great at all.

"What are you at?" Yang asked, noticing what Weiss was doing.

"Forty-nine," she answered with a grimace.

Yang checked hers. "I'm at seventy-two. Should be okay for now. Blake?"

"Ummmm… Seventy-six."

"What?!" Yang said incredulously. "How are you higher than me?"

Blake shrugged, a teasing smile on her lips. "I don't get hit?"

"... Wuss," Yang muttered, making Blake laugh, which made her smile in return.

"Pretty sure you can be at fifty percent and still have more total aura than Blake right now anyway," Weiss pointed out.

Blake's shoulders slumped. "True…"

Weiss turned to Ruby. It seemed only appropriate to get everyone's aura levels out there, and from the sheepish grin on Ruby's face, it looked like she knew that's where this was going.

"Uh… wassup?" she asked, looking at Weiss' belt buckle instead of meeting her eyes.

"What are you at, Ruby?" Weiss asked with a sigh, dreading the answer already.

"Y-you know, aura levels are really just numbers, when you think about it," Ruby tried to sidestep. "They don't really mat-"

"She's at twenty-one percent," Yang interrupted her. "She checked when her head got screwed back on straight.'

Yep. That was about what Weiss had been expecting-and fearing.

"I may have gone a little overboard with my semblance back there," Ruby admitted.

"You think?" Weiss sarcastically quipped at her.

"Smacking the ground at near terminal velocity probably wasn't the smartest move either," Blake added.

"... Yeaaaah," Ruby begrudgingly agreed.

"Don't worry," Yang said, "I've already taken her nose as punishment, and I'm not planning on giving it back any time soon."

Weiss wasn't sure how the Crucible that was supposed to do anything, but Ruby's shoulders slumped and she pouted in abject sadness.

"Now I think the Nevermores might have left," Yang said. "Or at least, they're not circling around here anymore." She pounded the ice wall beside her twice with a fist. "Maybe we can make a break for it?"

"Seems risky," Weiss hedged.

"Part of the job," Yang said dismissively. "We have to get past them somehow."

"If they're not in the immediate area, we can hopefully get to the trees without getting spotted," Ruby said. "If we can, then we can creep through the tree cover all careful and quiet for a bit until we're sure we lost 'em."

"And if we can't?" Weiss pushed.

"Then… we kill 'em?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "If we couldn't do that before, why would we be able to do it now when we're so depleted?"

Ruby shrugged lightly. "'Cause now we don't have a choice?"

… That… was hard to argue against.

"Besides, we don't know if we couldn't do it before," Ruby added. "We didn't try."

"... Fair."

"I'm down," Blake chimed in. "And if they are lurking around here somewhere, I can be the distraction this time instead of Ruby. Might be able to lose them with a couple shadow telep-"

"No," Yang declared firmly. "We're not doing that shit again. We stay together. That's final."

Silence…

"If they come at us, we'll just beat their stupid faces in," Yang said aggressively. "As a team. That's the whole point of all of this." She waved an arm towards nothing in particular.

"Yang's right," Ruby decided. "We should be able to deal with them if we work together. And if we can't…" -she thought for a moment, then shrugged- "then I guess we suck. But I don't think we suck."

"Are we totally certain Ruby's in a good enough state of mind to be shot calling?" Weiss grumbled.

Ruby kicked Weiss' toe lightly with a pout.

"Doesn't matter," Yang said. "She's right. Now come on, we got some chickens to fry."

Ruby grinned widely at that. "Stupid chickens," she agreed. Weiss knew she was likely just saying it this time because she thought it was funny, but it didn't exactly fill her with confidence that Ruby wasn't still suffering something from the concussion.

"Let's go," Yang ordered. "Weiss, get rid of this thing." She tapped the ice wall with her knuckles.

The four of them all readied their weapons in unison.

"Alright…" Weiss said slowly. "Here goes…"

* * *

**Aight, so a couple notes. **

**Obligatory thank you to my Preaders, of course. Especially Sashu, as I had a bunch of nonsensical typos in the early pages of this chapter. I must have been drunk while writing except I haven't had alcohol in years, so idk what happened there lol. **

**Also, writing a Glynda fight was surprisingly fun. It was nice to write for a Dust caster that isn't Weiss. And gravity Dust has some neat possibilities to be creative with. **

**And now I'd like to recommend something to all of you. Not sure if I've mentioned it in an Author's Note like this before, but if I haven't then I want to tell all of you about Worm. I made a little reference to it in here, and I cannot recommend it to you guys enough. It's a webserial written by a man named John "wildbow" McCrae and it is the best story ever written, ever. It is the inspiration for, like, 80% of this story, which might seem weird considering it's a RWBY fanfic, but there ya go. **

**Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before. Oh well. Go read Worm! And donate/support wildbow! He's writing the sequel series, Ward, now, and deserves a million bajillion dollars for his awesome writing and so he can continue focusing solely on his story and not having to do lame human jobs like the rest of us. **

**Anyway, that's all! Still trying to think of a decent alternate name for this story. Feel free to fling suggestions at me. :3**


	33. Hunting 3-5

"Alright, Weiss, lower the wall," Ruby ordered.

It definitely felt weird giving orders, but Ruby confident that she was right here. The person that knew what to do should be the one in charge, right?

The wall of ice in front of them began to dissolve away into frosty blue mist-because Dust was too freaking weird for the ice to just melt into water, ya know? The center opened up to the outside first, letting in a flood of sunlight that made all the girls squint and/or cover their eyes, then the rest of the structure rapidly faded away.

Nothing. Utter quiet.

Ruby couldn't trust that, though. The Nevermores could be perched right above them for all they knew.

She needed to get Crescent Rose.

"Yang, lead," she said calmly. "Weiss, can you get me up to Crescent Rose? I don't want to use my semblance." She was running dangerously low on aura. Time for some semblance conservatism.

Weiss gave a nod, too distracted from scanning the strip of sky that was visible to them to formulate an answer with words.

Yang walked out in front of the group until she was just a few feet past the mouth of the cave, her fists up by her face, her steps slow and measured, knees bent, ready to spring into action. She looked straight up, then around.

"Looks clear," she announced to the team as Ruby joined her. "Looks like da Rose is still up there," she remarked, pointing to the thin black line jutting out from the rock a few dozen feet above them.

Ruby breathed a sigh or relief. She hadn't expected the Nevermores to, like, steal her weapon or something, but it was nice to reaffirm it was there.

It would be even nice to have it in her hands again.

"Boost me, Weiss!"

Before she was even done with the sentence, the familiar high-pitched hum of Weiss' glyph forming rang out, followed by the deep bass thrum as she activated it and Ruby launched into the air.

Ruby couldn't help it-she let out a yelp of surprise.

Look, getting suddenly launched into the air at a bajillion miles an hour can be disconcerting even if you know it's coming, alright?

The one glyph was enough to get her almost twenty feet up into the air before gravity pulled her to a stop, but as soon as she started falling back down, another white glyph appeared underneath her feet. She landed on it in a light crouch, then jumped off, the accompanying boost from the glyph easily letting her get all the way up to her scythe.

One quick snatch-and-tug later and Ruby had her Crescent Rose back safely in her hands.

'_Don't worry, beautiful. I'll never leave you by yourself ever again!'_

Ruby was expecting Weiss to summon a grey glyph under her and make a little staircase for her to run down or something, but instead a black glyph appeared a few feet below her and pulled her down. Right before she reached it, though, it disappeared.

'_What the heck?!'_

Ruby wasn't sure why Weiss was suddenly throwing her down to the ground, and the weightlessness of falling didn't feel nearly as awesome this close to the ground as it had when she was hundreds of feet up with the Nevermores. She was just about to shift into her semblance to slow and manage her fall when another black glyph appeared below her and pulled her down. This time, she was able to land on it for about half a second before this one disappeared.

Again, that mild panic of freefalling, with the new fear of getting another concussion and having Weiss disapprove of her brain even more.

:(

But another glyph showed up, then disappeared. The sequence continued as Ruby fell and she relaxed as she realized Weiss was making a makeshift elevator with her glyphs. A glyphevator? Glyph...vator? Eleglyph?

Aight, those two words just really didn't go together, did they?

The trip down was a little stop-and-starty as some of the time Weiss made the glyphs disappear before Ruby reached them and other times Ruby's feet made contact with them and she jerked to a stop.

Once Ruby got to the last ten feet of the fall, the glyphs Weiss summoned were white instead of black, slowing her descent just before dissipating.

Ruby landed with a soft thump, Crescent Rose clutched possessively in her hands.

"That's new!" she chirped to her bestest bestie.

Weiss smiled proudly and gave one of those head tilt-shrugs. "I just improvised something like that to get Professor Goodwitch out of trouble. I think I like it, though… I'm not that great at timing it…" She trailed off and looked down at her feet, looking kinda frustrated.

"Something we can practice later!" Ruby encouraged her.

It was super neat that Weiss was finding new ways to use her glyphs! And not surprising either. She was really smart and the glyphs were a really versatile power.

Weiss looked up at her and gave her a confident nod. "Yes. For sure. I'm… mostly just happy I was able to improvise at all."

Ruby beamed at her, equally happy. That was a good point! Weiss apparently freaked out when she didn't have a plan or didn't know what to expect, so her coming up with anything on the fly was good experience for her to get.

"Same!" she agreed. She turned back to the open expanse in front of the cave and the problem at hand. "Now… Yang, lead the way. The rest of us will coconut behind you."

"Uh, what?" Yang asked, her eyebrows going wonky.

"What? You don't want to be in front now?" Ruby asked, confused.

"No, I do… but you said you were going to… _coconut_ behind me?"

"What?! No I didn't! I said we'd all _follow_ behind you!"

Yang blinked at her.

"What?!" Ruby squeaked again. "I wouldn't say coconut, that makes no sense!"

"You definitely said coconut," Blake chimed in behind her.

"Hopefully this concussion goes away soon," Weiss muttered. "It was already hard enough following you in some conversations."

"Most conversations," Blake amended.

Weiss nodded. "Most conversations," she agreed.

"Hey! Al-alright, enough!" Ruby stammered, confused how this had gotten back to 'Poke fun at Ruby' so quickly. "Just go already!"

Yang snorted a laugh and walked forward out into the open, Weiss and Blake following behind her while Ruby stood still and sulked. When Professor Goodwitch drew level with her, she leaned over to whisper, "Professor, did I really say 'coconut'?"

The woman raised a bemused eyebrow at her. "Indeed you did, Miss Rose," she replied just as quietly. "I'd recommend focusing a bit more aura into healing that little head of yours. I'd also like it on the record that I will not be coconutting anywhere, thank you very much."

Ruby couldn't help giggling at that. It sounded so funny to hear a professor say that!

She walked up to join the others, Blake giving her a smirk that totally said 'I heard that'.

Darn.

"I guess we're clear?" Yang said at the lack of angry chicken charging noises.

"Guess so," Blake concurred.

Weiss shuffled her feet nervously. "They may have gone back to eating the dire constrictor," she noted.

"If they did, we can try going across the canyon again and just go wayyyy further down so there's no way they can see us," Ruby offered.

Weiss nodded. "I'd rather not fight them, so that sounds like a good plan."

Yang opened her mouth, looking like she was about to argue, then slowly closed it.

"Yang?" Ruby prompted.

She shook her head. "Just don't like the idea of leaving them behind us is all. But if we just stay far enough away then it shouldn't matter."

"Doesn't matter anyway," Blake stated, crouching into a fighting stance as she looked above the trees to the north. "They didn't go back to the snake."

The other three all turned to loo-

Yep. Both of the Nevermores were visible in the distance just above the trees. The circles they were flying in soon carried them out of view again, but if Ruby was judging the distance correctly…

"They're waiting for us to come back to cross," she realized.

"That doesn't make _any_ sense," Weiss argued. "Why wouldn't they just wait for us out here?"

"Maybe they didn't want to fight us where we had the cave for cover?" Blake said.

"They're _birds_, Blake," Weiss countered. "Do you really think they're that smart?"

Blake waved a hand in the direction they'd spotted the Nevermores, a 'duh' look on her face. "All the evidence seems to indicate that, yes," she shot back.

Weiss opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, frowning. Stumped.

"Well, guess we'll have to fight them," Ruby decided. "We coulda snuck by if they were eating down in the canyon, but with them flying up there and looking for us, we'd have to walk forever to get around them."

Weiss sighed in resignation. "I don't think we have it in us to win that fight."

That… was a valid worry.

"It's okay, we got this," Ruby reassured her team before she really started even trying to figure out how they were going to 'get' this. "Um… we could jump down into the canyon and fight them there? Use the walls to Reverse Guillotine them like last time, maybe?"

"Wouldn't we be sitting ducks for their feather attacks?" Yang said.

"Featherstorm!" Ruby cut in.

Yang gave her a deadpan look, then continued with her point. "Even one feather hits _really_ hard."

Ruby thought back to the feather that hit Yang and caused her aura to flicker. "Yeaaah…" she admitted.

Professor Goodwitch cleared her throat then, all members of Team RWBY immediately turning their attention to her.

"I will offer a little bit of help here. If you were not already aware, which it sounds like you are not, Nevermores have a limited number of uses of their feather attack."

"Featherstorm!"

"Yes yes, that's what Nidas called it, too. Featherstorm. What-have-you. They have a limited amount of feathers they can conjure, older Nevermores having a larger pool."

"What, like it's their semblance and they're spending aura on it?" Weiss asked.

Whoa, wait, what?!

"Indeed," the professor answered, "very much like that. There are theories about Grimm having some sort of dark mirror to our aura, which would explain the heightened durability of some of the tougher species."

"_Theory?_" Weiss huffed incredulously. "Wouldn't that be something that should be _top priority _to confirm?"

The professor looked coolly back at the disgruntled princess. "Yes, it would. Unfortunately, our aura detectors don't read anything off them, reinforcing the theory that what they have is an alteration of some sort, and you might imagine that there aren't a line of Grimm volunteering for testing."

Weiss gave her equivalent of a pout-more eyebrow than lip-at the professor's sass.

Ruby giggled at the mental imagery though. "What if they did? That would be so funny. Beowolves walking around with, like, 'I donated' stickers and getting donuts afterwards."

"Or there could be Grimm _giving_ the tests," Yang played along. "Like an Ursa in a labcoat named Doctursa."

Ruby broke out laughing at that.

"Guys, _focus_," Blake hissed at them. "Professor, would you be able to tell us how many… featherstorms… Nevermores of this size would have?"

Professor Goodwitch tilted her head and thought for a moment. "Three to five, I'd guess. They seem to be in the young adult stage."

Blake turned to Ruby. "You remember how many times they featherstormed you while you were distracting them?"

Haha! 'Featherstorm' was catching on!

But…

"Not… really? A bunch, like at least… eight? Maybe nine?" There'd been the, what, three or four over by the canyon, another three or four running through the trees, and another two over by the cave. "Maybe ten?"

"So they've gotta be tapped out by now, right?" Yang concluded.

"Maybe that's why they backed off," Blake added contemplatively.

That made sense. It also made this fight way more winnable. If the Nevermores were out of their ranged AOE attacks, that meant the only way they could hit the team was by getting into melee, and they were big and clumsy up close, and didn't have the same kind of hitting power that a Deathstalker or other similar Big Grimm would. They could flap and smack with their wings, scritch and scratch with their claws, and pick and peck with their beaks. The wings probably wouldn't hit too hard because the muscles weren't made to move in slashy motions, and the claws wouldn't help them much if they were on the ground, and it would be easy to dodge them if the Nevermores tried to hover above them and kick/grab. That left the beak as the only real threat, as that would probably strike fast and hard, but the team could keep moving around the dumb chickens and not let them get a good attack off.

So… winnable, right?

"We don't even necessarily need to kill them," Weiss' voice cut through Ruby's strategisizing.

"Hm?" she responded instinctively.

Weiss blinked when everyone turned to her, shuffling her feet a bit. "Well… we're a bit tapped out too, and we all remember how much effort it took to kill the Nevermore in initiation, right?"

Everyone nodded.

"So maybe we don't go through the effort of killing them," Weiss finished. "Maybe we could just cripple them, clip or slash their wings so they can't pursue us. In Grimm studies we learned that Nevermores' wing joints are really vulnerable compared to the rest of their bodies. Maybe we just have Ruby…" She trailed off and made a scissor motion with her fingers.

Ruby smiled widely. One, she was really proud that she'd remembered the same lesson about Nevermore weaknesses that Weiss had. Granted, Weiss probably remembered a lot more from their lessons than Ruby did, but hey, she could pretend this meant she was as smart as Weiss for a little bit, right?

And two, that was a good point, and a good plan. They didn't need to _kill_ the Nevermores, just neutralize the threat they posed.

She gave an encouraging nod of agreement. "Do you have it in you to keep them pinned down long enough for that?"

Weiss' eyebrows scrunched up in that cute concerned-thinking face she had. "I… think so?" She paused a moment, then reconsidered. "Yes, definitely, but then I might not have anything left for afterwards."

"Blake and I might be able to help," Yang said, grinning wickedly at her partner.

"We can?" Blake blinked in surprise.

"I got an idea."

Blake narrowed her eyes. "Am I going to _like_ this idea?"

Yang shrugged casually. "Depends on if you still hate the idea of my touching Gambol Shroud."

Blake instinctively hugged her sheathed sword to herself. "Mine!" she protested quietly.

Yang cracked up laughing at that. "It's not that bad. C'mon, let's get going. I'll tell you on the way."

With that, Yang began walking back toward the canyon, Blake falling into step beside her as an instinctive reaction to Yang's invitation.

Weiss looked at Ruby, who looked back and gave a shrug. Seemed like Yang had some cool team maneuver idea. They probably should have worked out a marching order again, but screw it. Ruby was tired and her head hurt. Walking two and two would be fine.

"C'mon, Professor," Ruby said as she and Weiss began walking side by side. "You get the A team protection now!"

"I heard that!" Blake quipped back from freaking twenty feet away, turning to give Ruby a playful glare. Naturally, Ruby responded by sticking her tongue out at the girl.

"Stop it!" Weiss hissed at her. When Ruby turned to complain, Weiss jerked her head slightly towards Professor Goodwitch.

Oh. Right. Gotta be, like, professional or whatever.

"I feel so safe now," the professor said in a completely dead tone.

Weiss sighed.

"How you feelin'?" Ruby asked her partner as they walked. "You good?"

The brief hesitation before Weiss answered was telling. "I'm fine," she said, the word 'fine' coming out high pitched and squeaky.

"... That Elder Weaver scare you a bit?" Ruby guessed.

She'd never seen a Weaver in person before, much less a big'un, but seen pictures and heard Dad and Uncle Qrow's stories. Apparently Team STRQ got ambushed on a scouting mission by two Elder Weavers when they were students.

Dad said it was probably the scariest, freakiest Grimm he'd ever encountered.

"I wasn't _scared_," Weiss retorted, loading the word with disdain. "I'm not a c-... Not scared."

Weiss would never admit to being scared. It wasn't in her. That kind of admission took more self confidence and self assuredness than she had. Ruby was going about this wrong. This was Weiss she was talking to, she should make it about thoughts, not feelings. Weiss was a lot better dealing with those.

"What did you think of it, then?" she asked instead.

Weiss stared blankly ahead and Yang and Blake for a few seconds before responding. "It was just… H-how are we supposed to be expected to make a life out of fighting these things? It-you weren't there, and I don't think words can do a good job of describing it, but it was… _monstrous_, Ruby. Massive and ancient and evil and…. I felt so insignificant standing in front of it."

Exclamation points exploded in Ruby's brain at that admission of feeling, of what was really bothering Weiss.

The giant Grimm had made her feel insignificant. That was something the Ruby could understand bothering Weiss so much-she's been training and studying and working hard to try to be a perfect huntress and out on her first official hunt she got thrown up against an uber Grimm that she could never take on by herself with all the experience in the world. That was probably frustrating, thinking all of her work was irrelevant against the Enemy.

"Well… you have a team to help you! You're not supposed to be able to take it by yourself."

From the way Weiss' brow knotted, unconvinced, Ruby got the feeling she hadn't quite hit the mark.

"It's not just that," Weiss continued. "It's just… people don't belong in forests and caves fighting Grimm like this. It's like... trying to live underwater or trying to breathe lava. We don't belong there. It's not something we were made to do."

Huh… Ruby had never thought of it like that. She's always thought her purpose _was_ to fight Grimm, that it _was_ what she was made to do. Why else would she have super powers?

"I'm sure you don't get it," Weiss grumbled. "You seem to be _enjoying_ this somehow."

"No, I do!" Ruby protested quickly. "I get it!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow at her.

"I don't feel the same way, but I _do _get it!" Ruby pressed. "And maybe you're right. Maybe we weren't made to fight Grimm. But that doesn't mean we _can't_."

That drew another thoughtful frown from Weiss, and she turned her gaze back to the front with a noncommittal "Hmm".

Did… that mean Ruby made a good point?

Probably?

If it was a bad point, Weiss would have just said "That's dumb", so if she actually had to think about it, then it must be at _least_ okay… right?

"Well regardless, I'm not quitting, so it doesn't really matter," Weiss eventually declared. "I'm probably just overreacting from… stress and… stuff."

Ruby giggled at the lack of eloquence. "You _did _get Grimm guts on you," she pointed out in agreement. "And you ran into a Greater Grimm. On your first Hunt."

"And I got stuck in a cave wall while rock climbing in a claustrophobic tunnel," Weiss added.

"Wait, what?!"

"Long story. The thesis here is that everything sucks and today is the worst."

"Weiss noooooo!" Ruby wailed, rushing over to hug Weiss' arm and getting an annoyed huff in response. "This is our first day being an awesome team! It can't be the worst!"

"Are we being awesome?" Weiss asked dubiously. "Our civilian died to a stalker in our first encounter with Grimm, you lost most of your aura and all of your brain trying to get away from the Nevermores, and Blake and I almost definitely would have died in that cave if Professor Goodwitch hadn't been there."

"Most definitely," the professor replied from behind them, startling Ruby.

Weiss gave Ruby an "I told you so" look.

"W-well… don't worry!" Ruby stammered. "We can totally get to the finish line and be super awesome doing it! Trust me!"

Weiss definitely wasn't convinced.

Ruby stubbornly shook the girl's arm back and forth, trying to persuade her through physically shaking some trust into her if nothing else would work.

"Alright, fine!" Weiss snapped, lightly slapping Ruby's hands to get her off. "We can do this. Just… focus and stop hitting your head."

"It was one time!" Ruby whined.

Hopefully this didn't become a thing.

A quiet settled over them for a bit, then a question popped into Ruby's head (as they do).

"How are we doing, Professor? Like, if you had to guess a grade for us right now, what would it be?"

"It would not be appropriate for me to tell you that now," she answered flatly.

"So… bad?"

"I didn't say that."

"So, good!"

The professor rolled her eyes. "Miss Rose!"

"What?!" Ruby chirped with a grin.

"I am a professor of almost two decades. Your insistent, childish antics aren't going to persuade me to abandon the professionalism due my station and experience."

Her grin died, replaced with a pout. Ruby looked at Weiss, who glared back at her.

"Could you stop embarrassing us, please?"

"I'm not! I'm just embarrassing myself!"

Wait… that wasn't a great argument.

"You're our _leader_, Ruby. You're representing all four of us. And _embarrassing_ all four of us!"

That made Ruby cow back a bit. "S-sorry!" she replied instinctively.

This sucked. Ruby was just being silly! It's not her fault Professor Goodwitch apparently has zero sense of humor. Or negative sense of humor. Is that a thing?

And leaders shouldn't be representatives for their whole team! That was dumb. There was no way Ruby would ever be able to act like a combination of herself and Weiss and Blake and Yang! So how the heck was she supposed to represent all of them?!

Although… maybe that's not what Weiss meant.

Whatever. This was dumb. Team leaders should be in charge of their team in battle situations and then beyond that they should just be a normal team member. That way nobody would have any reason to yell at Ruby! She was awesome at fighting, and then whenever they weren't fighting she could just be Normal Rubes without any of these weird team leader expectations!

"Sorry," Weiss said quietly, making Ruby look back over in surprise. The regretful expression on Weiss' face disappeared in a flash, hidden behind the normal mask of Schnee impassiveness, but Ruby saw it! It was there!

"I didn't mean to snap," Weiss continued, not making eye contact as she spoke. "I'm just… stressed. You're fine. Just dial the goofball setting down until we get out of here, okay?"

Haha! So Ruby got to still to be goofy! Score.

"Deal!" she agreed.

Of course, Weiss just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

Apparently Ruby couldn't even agree with her correctly. :(

"How's your weapon, by the way?" Weiss asked, the change of topic throwing Ruby for a spin.

"Huh? What would be wrong with Crescent Rose?"

Weiss shrugged her head a little. "It got stuck in the cliff face, didn't it? I just thought, I don't know, it might have gotten scuffed or chipped or something when you decided to _stab a cliff_ for whatever reason."

"It would've been really cool if it had worked!"

But Weiss raised a good point. Ruby pulled out her weapon and unfurled it, holding it up as she walked to inspect the blade.

"Oh… crap. You're right."

"Did the blade break?" Weiss asked, leaning to look herself.

"The blade's okay-scratched at the end a bit, but that's it. But the housing is cracked on the end."

Ruby tilted the weapon around so Weiss could see where the red metal casing that held the scythe blade was broken, a small piece a bit smaller than Ruby's fist carved out of it, with a few cracks extending a couple inches past it. Nothing too bad, but…

"Uh-oh," Ruby muttered, reaching up and giving the blade a wiggle to test her-

Crap. It wiggled.

"What's wrong?" Weiss asked.

"The part of the casing that broke off held one of the clamps that keeps the blade locked in place. So now the end is all…" She trailed off and gave the end of Crescent Rose's blade another wiggle to demonstrate.

It wasn't wiggling _too_ much-there were four other pairs of clamps running along the casing for redundancy and sturdiness. But it was enough that Ruby was a little bit worried about hitting something too hard and causing the blade to snap. The steel that she and Uncle Qrow had used for the blade was strong and held an edge well, but was also pretty brittle.

"Can you fix it?" Weiss asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

"Of course! But not out here… Actually, not at Beacon, either. I don't have a workshop here."

The makeshift workshop Dad set up for her in the garage was easily the place Ruby loved most in the world and knowing it was so far away, especially now when she needed it, kinda totally sucked.

"You're welcome to use the open workshop for students," Professor Goodwitch told her.

That made Ruby's eyes go wide. "Whoa, really?! We have one? Is it awesome?!"

The professor chuckled a little. "Yes, it is quite impressive. You all will have a class next semester in it for weapon care and repair. Although it sounds like you are already fairly experienced in weaponsmithing. Did you make this Crescent Rose?"

"I helped design her!" Ruby crowed happily. "And helped a little bit on the actual forging, but my uncle did most of it 'cause I was little and he didn't want me to get hurt or mess up anything."

"Ah, Qrow," Professor Goodwitch nodded. "I should have guessed that. His style is all over it."

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed happily. That was, like, the best compliment for a weapon ever!

"Will this be a problem during this Hunt, though?" Weiss worried, gesturing towards the missing piece of Crescent Rose's casing.

Ruby frowned. "... Maybe. I'll just need to be careful with my swings and try to make sure most of my hits connect at the base of the blade. If I do that, it should be fine… I hope."

"Well… maybe this would be a good opportunity for us to get you that new steel so you can upgrade it like we talked about before."

Ruby's mouth dropped open. "You're right! We could totally do that! A-are you sure you're still willing to pay for that, though?"

The grumpy face Weiss gave her didn't make much sense to Ruby. "Of course," she declared. "I said I am, didn't I?"

Ruby held her hands up in surrender, Crescent Rose still in her left. "Sorry! I didn't mean-I just meant… um… I'm not really sure what I meant, but nothing bad!"

Weiss' grumpy face lasted about two more seconds before she cracked a tiny smile. "Okay. But yes, I'm willing to pay for it. And I'm kind of eager to try figuring out how to put Dust ports in a weapon."

"You mean you don't know already?" Ruby asked, a little surprised.

"I know the Dust refining process and how to cast with it. I'm not an engineer!"

"Oh… right. I just thought you knew everything about everything."

Weiss' cheeks flushed. "Well… I don't. It's nice that you think so, though."

"If you need any assistance, there are several professional weaponsmiths and mechanists that work out of our workshop that should be able to help," Professor Goodwitch chimed in.

"Whoa, really?" Ruby chirped, turning to walk backwards and look at the professor clearly.

"Indeed. When I say it's an open workshop, I mean it. Any weaponsmiths with a professional or apprentice license is welcome to use our facility and resources. And any aspiring, untrained individuals are able to take classes with us. You'll likely have at least a couple in your class next semester."

"That's so awesome!" Ruby cheered. Like, she already knew Beacon was The Best, but this was a delicious icing on the already delicious cake!

"How much does it cost to use Beacon's things?" Weiss asked. She then reached out to grab Ruby's arm and jerked her to the side, and after a moment of confusion Ruby realized her partner had stopped her from tripping over a root.

"Thanks," she whispered, turning to walk forward again.

The professor answered Weiss. "Using the facility is free, and we only ask that the people using it pay us back for any resources-ores, gears, clamps, et cetera-once they sell their creations. The classes have a small fee to make sure the instructors are compensated for their time, but not much."

"That… doesn't seem like a very good business strategy," Weiss said.

The professor's eyebrow arched up in that professor-y way she had. "Ours is an institution built for education, not profit, Miss Schnee."

The way she said Weiss' last name almost sounded… bitey. From the way Weiss' shoulders pulled together and she shrank in on herself, Ruby figured she'd taken it that way too.

Right when Weiss opened her mouth to respond, she was cut off by the distant screech of a Nevermore. The two of them froze in place, waiting and watching the sky to see if they were being attacked.

A second passed. Two. Five.

Footfalls through the underbrush crunched from up ahead announcing Yang's return, Blake at her side-though far less noisy.

When she came into view, Yang stopped and gave Ruby and Weiss a bemused look.

"Why are you guys stopped and crouching like a couple of bonobos?" she asked.

"You still need to define 'bonobo' for me," Blake muttered.

"I told you, it's beyond defining."

'"Did we get spotted?" Weiss asked urgently. "We heard a… caw, or whatever."

Yang grinned. "Ooooh. No, they're still flyin' around in circles up there. Just making the occasional stupid bird noise, that's all. Blake and I figured out our move! We think we can tie a birdo down if you can ground it, Weiss. And it would help if you gave me a boost."

"Boost fo-"

"What's it called?!" Ruby immediately burst out. The name was basically the most important part of the move.

Yang let out a devilish snicker. "Heeeehehehe. Tell 'em, Blake." She nudged her partner's elbow with her own. "Tell 'em."

The pouty scowl on Blake's face was kinda hilarious. "Um… Yang figured you'd ask that, and she insists on calling it… The Nae Nae?"

Yang's grin widened and she proudly put her fists on her hips in a totally unearned victory pose.

"What?!" Ruby squeaked. That was terrible! "Why?!"

"I don't really know? Something about how we're using Gambol Shroud as a whip… even though we're not, really."

"Shudup, yes we are!" Yang whispered to her loudly.

Blake rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I don't really care what we call it as long as it works."

"But we can't call it the Nae Nae!" Ruby whined. "That song is terrible!"

"Your face is terrible and I disown you!" Yang shot back.

"Oooooooh," Blake breathed in sudden realization. "It's a sooong. I thought you were just being an idiot."

"It can be both," Weiss quipped.

"I'll eat you," Yang grumped at her.

"Yang, I veto that name!" Ruby declared with executive authority.

"You can't! It's _our_ move, _we_ get to pick the name!"

"Blake doesn't like it!"

"Blake doesn't _care_!"

They both looked at Blake, who looked between the two of them like a deer in headlights, then shrugged.

"See?!" Yang yelled, flailing a hand toward her partner.

"This is _so_ not worth this much drama," Weiss drawled.

"Agreed," Blake said. "We have some Nevermores to kill and a relic to get to. Can we go?"

"And a professor to protect," Weiss added.

"That too. None of which need to involve ridiculous arguments about combo names."

Ruby pouted and shuffled along as Blake turned and began their trek again. "... But that name sucks."

"Listen here, Pipsqueak," Yang started, waiting for Ruby to reach her and then throwing a hand around her shoulder as they walked.

"No, _you_ listen here!"

There was a pause. Yang blinked at her. "... What?"

"What?" Ruby responded.

"You said 'you listen here'. Did you have anything to say?"

"Oh, no. I was just saying that."

Yang rolled her eyes. "Well, it's _my_ move that _I_ came up with. _I _get to name it!"

"This isn't a democracy!" Ruby protested.

"Yes it is," Yang said, giving her a squeeze. "I said so, so it is."

"That's not how democracy works," Weiss informed her.

"Shudup, Weiss!"

"But I _am_ the Senate," Ruby pouted.

Yang gave her a grin and another squeeze. "Not yet."

Alright, maybe Ruby needed to reevaluate Team Leader responsibilities. Maybe it should be being in charge in combat _and_ naming all of their combo moves now and forever, especially if the stuff Yang came up with was gonna be 'Watch Us Nae Nae'.

What a doof.

"I never got an answer to how I'm supposed to be boosting you," Weiss pointed out from Ruby's other side.

"Oh, right," Yang said. "It's easy. Just, when we go for the move, give me a glyph to help me jump over the Neverbutt."

Alright, this move sounded cool, whatever it was. The name was absolutely terrible, but it would probably be really sweet.

Weiss was not similarly impressed, though. "You want to jump… _over_ a Nevermore?"

"I mean… it'll be on the ground…" Yang reasoned.

"Well, sure, but…"

"Trust us, Weiss. It'll work," Blake said. "... Maybe."

Weiss' lips twitched. "Well now I'm filled with confidence."

"Mission accomplished."

"Shall we?" Ruby asked, eager to get to the fight now.

The trip back to the canyon was boringly uneventful compared Ruby's epic fighting retreat from it. And they couldn't even talk to pass the time 'cause Blake kept shushing Yang to listen and watch for the Nevermores and Weiss kept shushing Ruby because she's Weiss.

And, of course, the Nevermores would make stupid chicken noises every once in a while and they'd all tense up, ready for a fight.

A walk that was only about ten minutes ended up feeling like ten hyper-stressful hours.

When they got a couple dozen feet from the edge of the treeline in front of the canyon, Blake crept to a stop, crouching behind a large root and watching the Nevermores circling above carefully.

"So what's the plan?" Weiss asked.

"Just jump into the ditch and make them follow us?" Yang suggested.

"And if they still have feathers left to throw at us?" Blake challenged.

"Dodge 'em?" Yang answered like it was obvious.

To be fair, it _was _a little obvious.

"I can make a wall," Weiss offered. "Block a volley, maybe more if they're stupid."

All three of them turned to look at Ruby.

She blinked. "Um. I mean, yeah. That's kinda our only option, right?... I could go up there to them, actually. Fight them a bit in the air and try to bait out the featherstorms in a direction that won't hit you guys."

"Veto," Yang declared immediately.

"Yang-uh! Stawp it! You don't get to veto!"

"She's just saying she disagrees," Blake sighed impatiently.

"Yeah, she can do that. But when _I_ disagree, it's a veto. She just has normal disagrees."

"_Anyway_," Weiss hissed, "we all jump down together? Do we want to spread out and try to dodge their feathers or group up for my wall?"

"Mmmm… Group up," Ruby decided. "We'd have to burn semblances to dodge and risk losing aura if we can't, and we're running low. Better to take the safe bet with your wall."

"Okay," Weiss responded, barely audible. Her expression seemed to flick through different states of nervous and determined.

"Hey," Ruby said, getting her attention. "You'll do great."

Weiss nodded slowly. "I just don't want to screw up and get you guys hurt."

Yang clapped her lightly on the back, making Weiss startle a little. "No worries, Ice Queen. You got dis. Just do it like the wall at the cave. That saved our butts big time."

That prompted a tight smile from Weiss, who then gave one more single, confident nod.

"Alright, I'm ready."

"Blake, you ready?" Ruby asked, getting a solemn nod as Blake continued to watch the angry chickens above them.

"Yang?"

"Always," Yang answered, clicking out the knuckleguards on her gauntlets.

"Alright…. Um, Professor? You, uh, stay here I guess?"

Professor Goodwitch simply crossed her arms and took a step back.

"Maybe we should rethink this," Blake hedged.

"Naaaaah," Yang argued. "She'll be fine! Weren't you guys just saying a little while ago that Nevermores are territorial and there wouldn't be any other Grimm nearby?"

Blake pursed her lips. "Well, yes, but…"

"But nothing," Ruby cut it. "We need to get a move on. We have a plan. Let's do it and get this fight over with so we can get back to our actual mission of getting to the chess piece."

She looked at each of her team members in turn. Yang gave her an eager nod, Blake frowned for a moment before ducking her head and nodding at the ground, and Weiss simply met Ruby's eyes and waited.

Alright. Go time.

"Okay. Let's go, team. Landing strategies are hot! Eagle is go for launch! Uh…"

"Ruby, shut up," Yang groaned.

"Okay."

Ruby took a moment to remind herself to conserve her energy as much as possible for this coming fight. She was running low on aura as it was, and Crescent Rose couldn't take too much additional stress.

"... Go."

As one, they all broke from the treeline. Annoyingly, Yang was still a faster sprinter than Ruby, so she reached the edge of the cliff first and just… kind of… yeeted herself off, letting out a hollering ecstatically as she fell.

Above them, the Nevermores squawked angrily and both turned to glare down at them. Almost as if in slow motion, Ruby watched one of them tilt forwards to begin a dive, the other tilting backwards and winding up its wings for a featherstorm.

Short on time, Ruby yelled out an order with the least amount of words she could: "Weiss! Don't let it shoot!"

Weiss took a moment to take in the Nevermores and figure out what Ruby meant, and Ruby also dropped down to slid into a crouch, swinging Crescent Rose up and transitioning it to its rifle form in one smooth movement. Aiming for the Nevermore's eye, she let a shot loose before she'd even stopped sliding.

Unfortunately, not taking the time to line up the shot or even get a good foundation meant the shot went just wide. Before she could recover from the recoil to try again, though, the feathers began spearing out of its wi-

Weiss' ice projectile came into view, speeding towards the Nevermore. The first of the feathers intercepted it and set off the explosion. The ice erupted, a massive version of the ball of ice spikes Weiss made against the Beowolves a while ago. It looked like a giant blue version of those underwater mines.

Most of the other feathers got swallow by or blocked by the giant ice cube that suddenly popped up. The ice's momentum carried it up a little bit further towards the Nevermore, but then gravity pulled it back down and it fell away. The feathers that had been along the outside of the featherstorm were unimpeded, spearing down towards Yang but all harmlessly wide. It looked like she was falling through a tunnel of feathers for a moment.

Blake had already jumped down after Yang by this point. Ruby slid to a stop right at the edge of the cliff, her leading foot actually extending out over the edge, but she didn't wait a blink before leaping forward off that foot and pushing herself out into open air to plummet down after her teammates.

The Nevermore that had been diving was moving fast, aiming for Yang as it outpaced both Ruby and Blake in its downwards pursuit.

"Yang!" Blake shouted down toward her partner. It didn't look like Yang was able to hear through the noise of falling, though.

The Nevermore was getting closer to her.

Luckily, the stupid chicken lined up well with the sun that was more or less above them now, so its shadow came into view on the ground below and Yang saw that. She jerked around and started falling backwards, looking up at the Grimm that was about to try to bite her head off.

Suddenly, Blake's weapon, bent around into its pistol form, whipped out and wrapped around Yang's forearm. She flinched in surprise at it a bit, but then realized what was happening and grabbed onto the hilt-grip-thing just as Blake yanked her back with the other end of the ribbon.

The action pulled Yang from her trajectory and meant the snapping beak of the Nevermore that was about to nomph on her bit nothing but air.

Ruby wasn't sure what happened, but as Yang moved backwards, Blake moved forwards-probably physics, though maybe Yang was trying to throw Blake at the Nevermore.

Either way, the result was Blake was sent spinning around the giant bird, the ribbon catching on the creature's side as she was swung around and smacked into its underside with a surprised yelp.

Ruby unfurled Crescent Rose into its scythe form, ready to act. She noticed Weiss falling a bit above her, head first.

With one big pull on the Gambol Shroud's ribbon, Yang brought herself flying into the Nevermore's back, feet together in a solid double kick that dad woulda been proud of.

… An idea began forming in Ruby's head.

The Nevermore spread its wings to try to stop its fall and Ruby yelled out, "Weiss! Freeze the joint!" She pointed for good measure.

A second later, just as the Nevermore was beginning to slow, a signature Weiss-splosion of ice hit one of its wing joints, locking up its ability to fly. The one wing bent and seized up, the beast rotating and falling with that iced side facing the ground. Yang and Blake both drifted off, still tied together and not falling quite as fast as the giant monster.

Ruby slipped into her semblance and pushed herself to speed down to Yang. She grabbed her sister's arm and dragged the heavy lug a few feet forward to get her into place and up to get her above Blake, then exited the Rose Dimension.

Yang was staring at her in wide-eyed confusion.

"Land on its head!" Ruby shouted at her.

Understanding dawned in her eyes and she grinned, nodding.

Ruby zoomed over to Blake, catching on to her to make sure she didn't float away, and told her, "Throw Yang at its face!"

"What?!" she balked.

Ruby was already peeling away, though, getting ready to follow up her sister's strike if it wasn't enough to kill.

Dissipating black glyphs appeared underneath black, three of them slowing her down enough that she didn't break her ankles when she landed on the grey glyph Weiss summoned for her to land on. Using the platform to brace herself, Blake used both arms to throw Yang down towards the Nevermore.

At the end of the arc, Yang untangled her arm from Gambol Shroud and shot down like a bullet.

The Nevermore hit the ground with a crash, the ice bound to its side shattering out around it.

Yang's fist arrived shortly after, caving in the side of its face with the accompaniment of a shotgun blast.

Her superspeed landing meant that Yang suffered quit a bit of damage too, her aura rippling and knees buckling with the impact. It was fine, though. That just meant she'd have a mega punch ready for the other Nevermore.

_Other_ Nevermore because this one was very, very dead. Already dissolving, actually.

Ruby wanted to dance and cheer and hug her team, but she needed to focus. Step one was making sure she didn't splat onto the ground.

Easy enough with her semblance.

Weiss dropped down next to her. Above them, the remaining, now angrier, angry chicken screeched loudly and dove for Blake where she was still standing on Weiss' glyph.

Blake did an elegant, Blakey backflip off the grey snowflake and dropped down towards them. At the same time, Weiss pointed up at the glyph and seemed to be pouring more energy into it, because it expanded, more rings of glyphy glyph shapes appearing around the center.

The Nevermore rammed its beak into the glyph. There was a microsecond pause as the creature stopped there, almost like a single frame of lag, then the glyph split in two and the bird jerked back as it fell, flailing its wings.

It fell straight down, forcing Ruby and Weiss to scramble out of the way. Blake, who was almost snagged by it in midair, did some sort of epic ninja double-jump backflip, leaving a shadow in her place that the Nevermore's beak swiped through and dissipated into smoky curls.

When it hit the ground, the world shuddered.

It recovered quickly, though, and swiped a wing up, then down like an axe, towards Ruby.

She managed to push herself back just in time to dodge the strike as the steel edges of the feathers of the angry chicken's wings stabbed almost two feet into the rust colored rock.

Yikes.

Ruby immediately kited backwards, switch back to her rifle and trying to put a few shots into its eyes again.

The Nevermore shielded its face with a wing, swiping out with the other in the other direction. Ruby saw Blake jump over the swipe and actually land _on_ the wing, but she also heard Weiss yell out in pain or surprise.

Crap.

Well, if it was down here scrapping with them, that probably meant it was out of featherstorms.

Blake ran up the wing towards the bulk of the Nevermore, slashing down with both her sword and her bladed sheath as she moved.

The Nevermore reacted, tilting the wing up and twisting around to try to snap its beak around Blake's waist.

Blake lost her footing, executing a sideways flip with the use of a shadow that the Nevermore promptly murdered. It quickly jerked its head to the side to track Blake, though, and was about to snag her out of the air when there was a sudden, loud thud as it pitched forward and sideways with a squawk.

It was Yang. She'd run up behind the chicken and punched its leg out from under it with the energy the fall had fed her semblance.

Angry Chicken slashed out wildly with its wings, forcing all four of them back. It kicked itself up and flapped, trying to take to the air again.

Twenty feet above it, a _massive_ white Weiss glyph appeared, the musical sound ringing out louder than Ruby had ever heard. A moment later, a gigantic shard of ice lance down from it like some epic anime Spear of the Heavens and slammed into the Nevermore's back.

It shattered loudly, ice raining everywhere, unable to pierce the Nevermore's… hide? Skin? Whatever.

The impact was enough to force it to crash back down into the ground, though.

Yang immediately jumped on its back and ran up toward its head. Blake tossed Gambol to her and Yang caught it, pulling her partner up into the air as she ran.

Yang jumped down in front of the Nevermore to get in its face while Blake tried to do some sort of damage from on top of it.

Weiss skated over to Ruby, sweat dripping from her face and one of her sleeves torn up at the elbow.

"Nice mega ice spear thingy!" Ruby chirped.

"I need to freeze its feet, right?" Weiss asked, voice sounding tired and strained, evidently not in the mood to say 'thanks'.

"Yes!"

"It's moving too much," Weiss informed her.

Before them, the Nevermore was thrashing and bucking as Yang pummeled its face and shotgunned herself around to avoid reprisal. It was traveling more than ten feet with every step, more when it would jump around to try to throw Blake off its back.

Crap.

"Can you summon the ice under it with a glyph?"

Weiss frowned. "Yes, but that would just push it up, not trap it."

Double crap. So Weiss needed to do the projectiley thingies to actually freeze the chicken's feet to the ground, but they weren't fast enough.

…. But bullets were!

"Can you summon a magicy ice glyph for me to shoot through?" Ruby asked her partner excitedly. "So I can shoot it and apply the freeze that way?"

Weiss blinked. "I… think so?"

Ruby didn't need any more than that.

She crouched down and leveled her rifle. She rotated the scope to the side (because the Nevermore was too close to warrant it) while Weiss conjured a decently sized white glyph in front of her that slowly turned the light blue of ice Dust. It was a _little_ bad 'cause it obstructed her visibility a bit, but luckily her target was kinda really freaking big.

This move would need a name…

Ruby waited until Yang shotgunned herself to the side and the Nevermore leaned back to try to peck at her.

"Iceflower!" she yelled, taking the first shot.

Being the super awesome marksman she was (when she wasn't sliding full speed trying to shoot a flying target, at least), the shot hit the Nevermore's knee square on, erupting into a kaleidoscope of frosty petals (literally an ice flower! :D) and making the Nevermore stumble.

"Holy crap! That worked!" Ruby cheered in surprise.

The Nevermore lifted its free foot up and clawed the ice off of itself.

"Keep going!" Weiss shouted at her.

"Blake!" Yang shouted up to her partner, gesturing her to come down. "Time to Nae Nae!"

Ruby cringed. If Yang ever yelled that out in public, like in a tournament or something...

Ruby sent more shots into the Nevermore's leg. One, two, three, f-

Crap. Reload!

Both the Nevermore's feet were encased now, but the layers of ice were thin enough that when it had a chance to strain against them while Ruby was reloading, they began to crack.

Two magazines left. Twenty shots.

Ruby sent three more shots into the block of ice encasing the chicken feet, then the glyph in front of her winked out. Guess that ice Dust crystal had run out.

Weiss looked at her. "Do we need m-"

"Weiss, boost me!" Yang shouted.

She was standing with Blake in front of the currently trapped Nevermore, one end of the Gambol Ribbon in her hands.

"Oh, um…" Weiss muttered.

A white glyph appeared under Yang's feet, and a moment later she jumped, catapulting over one of the Nevermore's wings and landing on the other side, pinning the wing down with the ribbon.

The Nevermore skree'ed at them and jerked its wing up. Yang held on and held her ground, but Blake was pulled forward, dragged several feet before she could find her feet again.

"Yang!" she cried out. "I'm not strong eno-"

A black glyph appeared under her feet and anchored her in place.

"Thank you!" she called back.

"Ruby, now!" Yang shouted.

'_Now? Now whaaa… oh.'_

Yang's plan clicked into place and Ruby grinned. She unfurled Crescent Rose. Admittedly, she was a little apprehensive about what she was about to do because of how loose the tip of her blade was. There was a not-insignificant chance the end might snap or the whole blade might get yanked out of its housing, but… worth?

Weiss caught on too and launched Ruby up into the air.

Nice. This was awesome. It was all coming together. (huehuehue)

Ruby slipped into the Rose Dimension and began spinning, holding Crescent Rose across the back of her hips and building up her centridifugical force to make sure this attack worked. When she'd picked up enough speed, she swapped back to the real world, letting gravity take full hold of her again.

She arced down, a whirling petalstorm of epicness, and brought Crescent Rose's blade down right at the point where the Nevermore's wing that Blake and Yang were tethering met its torso.

There was a jerk of resistance for the briefest of moments that made Ruby worry she wouldn't cut through, but then it gave and Ruby sliced through. Her weapon slammed into hard rock at way-too-fast speed and there was a heart wrenching cracking noise.

There wasn't enough time to figure out what happened before the Nevermore reacted. It let out an ear-piercing shriek that had a physical _force_ behind it, throwing all of them back and shattering the ice that held it down.

Ruby was sent rolling, clutching onto Crescent Rose for dear life and trying not to poke herself on any of its edges.

The massive pile of feathers that was the Nevermore's dismembered wing had already began dissolving, the Nevermore itself haphazardly limping away from them.

Ruby pushed herself to her feet and lifted up her weapon to inspect the damage.

Pentuple crap.

The last section of casing that held the end of the blade had completely cracked open, leaving a foot and a half of exposed, unfortified blade just kinda hanging out. Poor Crescent Rose wouldn't even be able to fold up like this! Well… maybe it would because there was enough of the last section where the gears attached to the next housing that it might fold, but the blade might not go with it, and if it didn't, something would definitely break even more.

Ruby wanted to cry.

The Nevermore on the other hand, just seemed pissed. An injured animal might try to crawl away or something, but an injured Grimm? Nope.

Once it realized it wasn't going to get its balance anywhere close to normal again, it apparently decided "screw it" and just threw itself at the nearest enemy-Weiss.

It dove forward and tried to skewer her with its beak, but luckily she skated back just in time.

She was panicky, though, 'cause she sent herself tripping backwards, letting out a scared yelp as she landed on her butt, the Nevermore tensing to jump forward again.

Yang slammed into its side just in time, knocking it over. And with one of its wings missing, it had a hard time pushing itself up again.

It was forced to backpedal continuously as Yang assailed it, being careful to stay on its wingless side so it couldn't respond well.

Blake rushed up to help. She ran up from the side, swinging her weapon like a lasso before tossing it around the Nevermore's neck. She couldn't hold it down, though, but Yang quickly dashed forward and grabbed onto the ribbon where it hooked around. She shoved sideways and down, leveraging her strength to pin the thing's head down.

"Weiss, stab it in the eye!" she yelled out.

Weiss hesitated, clearly not eager to get close to the killer beak.

"Now! Right in the eyeball!"

Ruby could see Weiss steel her nerves before she acted, summoning a glyph underneath her and lunging forward, her sword thrust executed with uncanny precision. Myrtenaster was buried into the Nevermore's eye up to its hilt.

Again, another deafening shriek of pain. Weiss and Yang were both close enough to its head that they screamed in pain as they were knocked back. Myrtenaster and Gambol Shroud both left behind in and around the creature as the Nevermore staggered back.

'_How the frickity frack is this thing still up?!'_

One red beady, birdy eye glared at them, nothing but hate in it.

It was going to keep on attacking until it went down.

Ruby lifted Crescent Rose, then anchored the blade in the ground as the monopod she often used it as. The exposed blade didn't impede that functionality.

The Nevermore was far enough away from her now that she cranked her scope back into place, aiming down the glass at its remaining eye.

Her teammates were staggering to their feet when the Nevermore screeched again, knocking them back down.

Ruby pulled the trigger.

The evil light went out in the creature's eyes. It twitched once with a croaking noise, then collapsed, then twitched again.

Then it began to dissolve.

There was nothing but silence for the longest moment.

Weiss spoke first. "We did it?" she said in surprise, as if still taking in their victory and processing it.

"Hell yeah we did!" Yang cheered.

"Everything hurts," Blake croaked.

Ruby walked over to her team.

"Nice shot, Cap," Yang beamed at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

Ruby pouted in response.

Yang frowned. "What is dis? Why are you the sad?"

Ruby held up Crescent Rose in response.

"Don't stick your scythe in my face," Yang grumped. "Why are y-oh. Ouch."

Ruby nodded.

"Is it bad?"

"I think so."

Weiss and Blake both walked over to the disappearing corpse to collect their weapons.

"We can totally fix her!" Yang said cheerily. "No worries. Be happy! We just killed _two Nevermores!_ At the same time!"

"I used up so much aura," Weiss lamented as she approached.

"Shudup, Weiss! We won! And our Nae Nae totally worked!"

Ruby groaned at the name.

"Oh, don't even," Yang shot at her teasingly. "'Ice Flower'? Come on."

"What?!" Ruby squeaked. "It's an ice flower!"

"Yeah, but… Frost Shot? Helloooo?"

"..."

"..."

"Yeah, okay. That's better."

"Haha!"

"I'm still calling it Ice Flower until you stop calling your move the Nae Nae."

"You're both children," Blake sighed.

Yang laughed and held her hand up to her partner to high five. When Blake obliged, Yang snagged her hand and pulled her in for a one armed hug, so now she was squishing both Ruby _and_ Blake.

"Nice work, Partner," Yang said. "You were great."

Blake blushed deeply and stammered out, "Th-thanks. You too?"

Yang nodded confidently, pleased, and Blake smiled and bumped Yang's nose with her forehead affectionately.

"Weiss, come get congratulations hugs!" Ruby demanded, stabbing Crescent Rose into the ground and holding out her arms.

"... No thank you."

"But you were awesome! You earned congratulations hugs!"

Weiss shuffled her feet and looked around at the ground. "We _need _to get mov-"

"Weiss, shut up and come get your hugs," Yang cut in.

Weiss gave her princessy pout at Yang's curtness, but then she shuffled a small step forward. Then another. Then two, and she sidled up to Ruby and gave what she was probably hoping was going to be a quick sideways hug.

Of course, Ruby latched onto her as soon as she was within reach, squeezing as much pride and congratulations as she could into the girl.

"Okay, that's enough!" Weiss coughed.

"No!"

"Let go of me!"

"You're awesome!"

"Okay! Stop crushing me!"

Haha! Weiss accepted her awesomeness! Win.

Ruby slackened her grip and Weiss danced away before she could react enough to try to pull her back.

"Seriously, though," Yang said, "that was awesome, Weiss. That icy Spear of the Heavens shit? Dooope."

"That's what I thought it was too!" Ruby chirped happily.

"Thank you," Weiss said quietly, her lips twitching with the subtlest of pleased smiles. "And you, nice… punching. And Blake, nice… ribboning?"

"What about me?!" Ruby squeaked when it became clear Weiss wasn't going to continue.

"You had… nice slicing. _And _shooting. _And… _shotcalling? Or whatever you want to call it."

Ruby beamed. "Thanks!" So Weiss thought Ruby was awesome at _three_ things!

"We were all awesome, guys," Yang, giving Blake and Ruby another squeeze to reinforce the message. "Nice job."

"We _should_ get back to the professor, though," Blake reminded them.

'_Oh crap.'_

"Yeah, so _she_ can tell us we're awesome too," Yang grinned.

"And, you know, to complete the mission?" Weiss grumbled.

"Sure, sure. That too."

"How are we going to get back up the cliff?" Blake asked.

They all stared up at the top of the canyon wall several dozens of feet above them. Professor Goodwitch was there at the edge, looking down at them, arms crossed. She looked grumpy. Then again, she kinda always looked grumpy.

Then they all looked at Weiss.

Weiss sighed.

"All I do is carry you guys," she muttered, making Ruby burst out in delighted laughter.

"A'ight, team," Ruby announced. "Let's get this Hunt done."

* * *

**Sorry for the late update, guys! Been very busy and demotivated from being productive and also kinda just waiting for V7 to start. **

**Hope you enjoy! We are nearing the end of the girls' first Hunt. What grade do you think they'll get? xD**


	34. Hunting 3-6

When they got to the top of the cliff, Weiss stumbled a couple steps before falling to her knees. The mental strain of launching four people up a cliff was taxing-especially considering the difficulties posed with how heavy Yang was, so Weiss kept having to put more energy into her glyph or summon it lower to catch her-and the physical strain of pretty much this entire day meant she just wasn't prepared when her feet hit solid ground.

As soon as Weiss' palms hit the ground, though, Ruby was right at her side and lifting her up. Again, Weiss was caught off guard with how strong Ruby was and how firm her grip was despite her deceptively gentle frame. Although she _did_ know that the long sleeves of Ruby's outfit were covering some remarkably toned arm muscles, so it shouldn't be so surprising.

"You okay?" Ruby asked her.

She meant to say 'of course', but a grunt slipped out of her as she was pushing her feet under her, so she just nodded in quiet frustration instead.

Whether or not Ruby noticed her trip up, she'd never know. As soon as Weiss was upright, Professor Goodwitch addressed them with an impressed "Well done, girls," and Ruby immediately got distracted with being excited.

To be expected, really.

"Thanks!" Ruby beamed at the professor. "We didn't even need to sacrifice Yang!"

"Hey!"

"That's likely for the best," the professor said, face deadpan. "Well done, all of you. Bringing down two adult Nevermores is no mean feat, particularly for first years. You have achieved something truly impressive. You should all be proud."

Of course Weiss reacted to that, straightening her back and raising her chin.

Professor Goodwitch said they should be proud. That _Weiss_ should be proud. She might not have helped with the encounter in the forest, or been very effective in the cave, but she'd _done_ something here. She'd helped. They'd beaten two Nevermores as a team and she had proved she _belonged_ on the team.

Apparently Ruby agreed, because she gave Weiss a huge hug while she joked to the professor, "You know, Yang has mean feet. But meaner hands."

"These mean hands are about to yeet you off this cliff if you keep this up, _Captain_," Yang grumbled as she threw her arm proudly around her own partner, much like Ruby was doing now.

Huggy sisters.

"Pffft, I can fly," Ruby laughed off the threat.

"I dunno, you're running pretty low on aura, ain'tcha?"

Ruby not-so-slyly pulled out her scroll and checked it a moment, then said, "Pffft, Weiss would catch me."

"I'm running pretty low on aura too," Weiss told her. She hadn't checked yet, but she had that annoying buzz in her head that let her know she was close to running out. Twenty percent, if she had to guess-which she did because Ruby was pinning her arms to her sides.

"... Okay, you're feet are friendly," Ruby amended.

"And my hands?" Yang asked, grinning, as she walked over with Blake.

"... They're okay too."

Yang grinned and grabbed Ruby by the hood as soon as it was within reach with her free hand and dragged her in. Ruby grinned back and spun around to give Yang a full hug.

Apparently teasing jokes and threats were how these two said 'I'm proud of you'.

Yang kissed Ruby on the top of her head and said, "I'm proud of you, Rubes."

Okay, there was that too.

"Dad's gonna flip out when we tell him we killed _two_ Nevermores," Ruby bounced happily.

A pang of jealousy hit Weiss out of nowhere at that statement. _She _wanted to have a father that she could call when she got home just to gush about how amazing she and her team just were.

Well… she _could_ do that, but…

No.

Maybe she could call Winter, though? Winter would be proud of her!

… And also prevent herself from telling Weiss about how on her first Hunt she had single handedly killed ten Nevermores while blindfolded and with at least one hand tied behind her back, just to not hurt Weiss' feelings and make her feel inadequate.

She didn't have to say it for Weiss to know, though.

Weiss sighed.

"... bet Zwei will flip a table too," Yang was saying.

"Zwei would flip the _house_!" Ruby chirped in response.

"Totes."

"Yes, yes, you're dog will be very ecstatic," Blake said impatiently. "We still need to get across this canyon and to the relic."

"On it!" Ruby announced. She let go of Weiss and ran back to the edge of the canyon, stopped, paused for a moment as she looked around, then ran back to the group and smiled at Weiss expectantly.

"I have to make the bridge again, don't I," Weiss grumbled.

Weiss sighed. It was unfortunate, but it made sense. She was really their only way across. Now that her arms were free, she pulled out her scroll and checked out her myAura status.

21%

She'd been almost right on the money with her guess. It was also, amusingly, the same level Ruby had been at before this fight.

"Alright," she huffed. "But stay close and go ahead of me. I'm not making the whole bridge all at once this time."

"Okie!" Ruby agreed easily. "C'mon, Professor! We're back to the escortering."

"I'm overjoyed," she replied in a flat, not-even-remotely-regular-joyed tone.

Yang followed Ruby, the two leading the way as Weiss summoned five glyphs in front of them over the gaping nothingness of the chasm. Professor Goodwitch followed with Blake, and Weiss brought up the rear.

She did her best to make sure to summon glyphs in front of the two sisters at least one section ahead of them while also dropping glyphs as she past them. The on/off mental flip flop was hard to keep up, and a couple times she accidentally summoned an extra glyph behind them and dropped the one in front of the sisters, almost causing them to fall.

They were talented huntresses in training, though, and reacted quick enough to stop in time.

"Weiss, I can't fly, so if you drop me I'm going to be very mad," Yang called back.

"Shut up! I'm trying!"

"Trying to drop me?!"

"You know what I mean!"

It took about a minute to get to the other side of the canyon, and when her foot touched actual ground again and she could dispel her last glyph, Weiss let out a sigh of relief. The buzzing in her head was making it hard to focus.

And apparently that crossing only took three percent of her aura, which was better than she'd been expecting.

"Alright, Blake!" Ruby exclaimed once they were all stable. "Where are we going?"

Before answering, Blake stretched her arms over her head and groaned. Weiss caught Yang eyeing her partner up and down with a stupid grin on her face while she did so.

"That way?" Blake finally answered, pointing in a direction that looked like every other section of trees in front of them to Weiss.

She was hopelessly lost.

"That way it is!" Ruby said easily, fully trusting Blake's navigation. "How we looking on aura, team?" she then asked as she lead the way.

"Eighteen, now," Weiss grumbled.

"Oof," Ruby replied.

"You?"

"Twelve…"

"Yikes," Yang muttered. "I'm at twenty-four."

"What?!" Ruby spluttered. "Weren't you just at seventy-something?!"

"Yeah, and then I caved in a Nevermore skull while falling at full-speed-plus-Blake-throwing-me and then got pecked a bunch by the other one!"

"Oh. Alright. I'll allow it."

"Uh-huh. And you, Blakey-Blake?"

"Fourty-nine," Blake sulked.

"How'd _you_ get so low?" Weiss asked. She hadn't been able to keep track of everything very well during the chaos of the fight, but she didn't recall Blake getting hit. _Weiss_ had gotten smacked by a wing-that-was-basically-a-sledgehammer, but Blake… hadn't?

"Buncha stuff," Blake replied tiredly. "Got clipped by a wing once. Had to do a bunch of whipping with Gambol Shroud, and that takes a lot of aura. Plus I had to burn a bunch trying to hold the Nevermore down for the _Nae Nae_." She drawled the name of the combo move out with dripping sarcasm.

"You don't gotta say it like that," Yang pouted.

"Yes she does," Ruby quipped. "Man, we're really up fish creek here, huh?"

Yang let out a snorting laugh at Ruby's adorably censored idiom. Blake giggled, and even Weiss had to raise a hand to her mouth to hide a smile.

"Why are you laughing?!" Ruby demanded of her sister and Blake. Weiss had been quiet enough to escape detection.

"Ignore them," Weiss advised her partner. "They're just being dumb, as is the explanation for most things with your sister. We're definitely up fish creek."

"You know what, Ice Queen…" Yang grumbled, taking two long strides to the side to reach Weiss.

Before Weiss had a chance to react, two arms of super steel were wrapped around her torso and lifting her up. She let out an instinctive squeal-because of course she did! She thought she was being attacked!-but after a moment it became clear that Yang had only charged her to give her a giant bear hug and carry her around.

"Yan-what are you doing?! Put me down!"

"Nay! I must get vengeance for that insult!"

"By crushing me to death?!" Weiss wailed, kicking her feet fruitlessly.

"By giving you the worst thing you can imagine: hugs and appreciation!"

"I-what?" Weiss stammered, flummoxed by that answer.

"I want to take this moment to say that you're awesome and I'm very proud of the way you kicked ass back there."

The sudden compliment was so unexpected and so heartfelt that Weiss had no idea what to do or how to feel. When she started functioning again, she kicked her feet lightly again, this time happily, and tilted her head side to side, unable to contain a very Rubyish happy wiggle-

Then she caught herself. Why was she so pleased that _Yang_ was proud of her? That didn't matter… did it?

"Hear hear!" Ruby chirped in agreement.

"Ugh!" Weiss huffed, getting herself back on the correct mental track. "Put me down!"

"Nnnope!" Yang sang, far too happy with this situation.

"Ruby, help me!" Weiss ordered her partner, who was just walking backwards watching them with a stupid, cute, stupidly cute smile on her face.

"Help you what?" she asked, perplexed.

"Escape?!" Weiss shrieked. It should have been really damn obvious.

"Escape from hugs?" Ruby asked, still perplexed.

"Yes!"

"But why though?"

"Ugh!... Blake!"

Blake audibly sighed and glanced over her shoulder at them. "What?"

"Help meeeeee!"

"Oh yeah, sure, let me just come over and overpower _Yang_ real quick," she answered snidely.

"Maybe she's ticklish!" Weiss yelped desperately.

"She's not. I've tried. But she knows I definitely am and I don't want to start that."

Weiss kicked her feet some more.

"Just accept your hugs, Ice Queen," Yang said into the top of Weiss' head. "And remember this moment the next time you want to make a 'Yang is dumb' joke."

"Put me down!" Weiss demanded. Maybe… maybe she could make an appeal to reason? "You're wasting aura! We need to conserve it for the rest of the Hunt!"

Yang just chuckled. "What? How am I wasting aura right now?"

"Pouring it into your muscles?" Weiss said with a bit of an attitude. Spelling out the obvious was annoying, and she kept having to do it.

"Oh, that's adorable," Yang patronized her. "I don't need to use any aura to carry you around, Princess. You should really eat more."

"You should eat _less_!" Weiss shot back defiantly.

She didn't really mean it, of course. Yang was the fittest of them all, if anything. It just seemed like an appropriate… what was the word? Comeback?

"... I'm gonna let that go, because hugs should be happy, but now you have prolonged your hug as punishment."

"Nooooo!"

"Yep."

"This isn't a hug, this is wrongful imprisonment!" Weiss whined.

"Cry more."

"I will!"

"Ahem!" Ruby announced herself. "Methinks we should get back into formation and continue, team."

"Sure!" Yang immediately agreed. "Me and Weiss will lead." She began carrying Weiss ahead.

"'Weiss and I'," Weiss corrected, "and I don't _want_ to lead!"

"Yes you do."

"No I don't! Put me dowwwwwwn! This is kidnapping!"

Yang snorted. "You certainly are acting like a kid."

"Rubyyyy!"

Now a good distance behind her, Ruby just let out a traitorous giggle.

Weiss would have to make that dolt pay for this later.

She kicked her feet again and harrumphed to make her displeasure known. Well, _more_ known. Although Yang was a big stupid brute who seemed to not care at all.

After she had marched them far enough away from the others to be well out of earshot, Yang _finally_ set Weiss down.

"There, you hap-"

Weiss leapt away and whirled around, drawing Myrtenaster and pointing the pointy end at Yang, all while wearing the angriest face possible.

For whatever reason, Yang just cocked a bemused eyebrow at her.

"Put that eyebrow down!" Weiss demanded.

"As cute as that pout is, it's not going to work," Yang replied. "I have become inoculatedinnoculated to the powers of the Pout by the Rubles, who, I'm sorry to say, has a much more adorable pout than you anyway."

"I'm not pouting!"

"Sure, and I'm not blonde. Now c'mon, Doofus Queen. Walk with me."

Weiss blinked at that. Was this whole 'I'm a dumb gorilla that likes to pick up innocent girls and crush them as I drag them around like an idiot' episode just a ploy to get Weiss alone to talk?

"How you holding up?" Yang asked as she brought them to the treeline. She pushed aside a low hanging branch and held it up for Weiss to pass under.

That was kind and considerate.

Clearly she wanted something!

"I'm... fine?" Weiss answered, the words turning into a question mostly because she was so confused by the situation.

"It's just-I know you're having a tough time out here and all, and I know Ruby's very encouraging and all 'I believe in you!' and all that, but sometimes it's hard for her to get that, you know, there are some people that are afraid of Grimm and stuff."

"She's been very understanding, actually," Weiss replied. "But I'm not afraid!"

"I… sure, just… you doin' alright?"

"I'm fine," Weiss repeated, her voice hitching just a little.

They walked together in silence for a short while, silence that Weiss spent trying to figure out why Yang was asking all of this.

There was just the sound of footfalls crunching down on twigs and dead leaves for a couple minutes.

"It's okay to be scared sometimes, you know," Yang said quietly, breaking the silence.

"I'm _not_ scared!" Weiss insisted again. How many times did she have to go through this.

"I know! I know. I'm just saying… _if_ you were, it would be okay. Understandable."

That got an indignant huff out of Weiss. "What would _you_ know about being scared?"

"Plenty, Weiss."

That admission-coming from _Yang_, who was basically a living ego with a caring side-was surprising enough to make Weiss stop for a moment. Why would _Yang_ be scared? More importantly, why would she just _admit_ to it? Without Weiss even trying to get her to!

This was all weird.

"Yeah," Yang continued, taking Weiss' surprise as a response. "I'm always scared that I might get hurt too bad or, you know, like, killed, and then who's going to look after Ruby and Dad? And Zwei?! Trust me, our dad's a knucklehead just as much as Ruby."

"_You're_ a knucklehead," Weiss pointed out, her voice quiet because she wasn't entirely sure if she was supposed to be talking right now.

Yang took it in stride with a smile though. "Yeah, okay. Still, I take care of my fam. And I am very scared of what happens to them if something happens to me. And that's a pretty big risk considering how ham I tend to go…"

"Have you tried _not _going so… ham?"

Was Weiss using that phrase right? She had no idea.

Yang just chuckled. "Yeah, but… it's fun. Kinda… thrilling. I should definitely stop, but that fear kinda… it's like an electric shock, ya know?"

"Not at all," Weiss answered. "And is that even supposed to be a good thing?"

"Yeah! It's like… ah, I dunno. I guess the difference here is kinda fight or flight thing? Like, when I get scared I want to charge forward and when you get scared you…"

"Want to run away?" Weiss finished for her dejectedly.

"That came out sounding a lot worse than I meant it to," Yang grimaced. "My point is we're both scared, Weiss. It's okay to get scared. And what's even better is you fought through it! You were scared and kept going anyway! So… I dunno. I guess I'm just saying… It's okay to be scared, and it's okay to, like, admit it… or whatever."

"Why does it _matter_?" Weiss challenged her, not at all on board with this heart-to-heart conversation in the middle of this Grimm infested forest.

"I don't know!" Yang flustered. "It's just, you know, it can be good to say it out loud to, like, _deal_…Whatever, I guess you don't have to admit it, but… just know that it's okay to be scared and you're doing great and, uh, I'm glad you're… our… teammate?"

She ended the awkwardly juttery sentence with a nervous chuckle and a scratch at the back of her head.

All of Weiss' reservations and barriers melted at that. It was… exactly what she needed to hear. And Yang meant well, clearly.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Uh-huh."

Another long silence stretched, and Weiss spent it actually trying to do what she was supposed to and scout. The happiness and satisfaction she was feeling was foreign and she didn't know what to do with it, so having an 'assignment' to focus on instead was good.

The shadows of the forest were looming and shifting with the movement of the canopy above them. It being afternoon now meant the sun and the shadows it was casting were angled, sinister.

More than once, Weiss thought she saw a Beowulf or a Stalker creeping up on them through the foliage, but another inspection revealed them to be nothing but rustling bushes.

Even with that pep talk, Weiss was on edge.

"The Elder Weaver was completely, utterly terrifying," Weiss finally admitted. This was something she'd felt okay to share with Ruby because… well, she's _Ruby_. And Yang really was just as kind, if a bit more… burlish. But this would be okay to share. It was just objectively _true_, not just Weiss' opinion.

"Yeah, Blake said the same. Sor-"

"She did?" That was somewhat comforting. Though Blake being scared was not something to be happy about, right?

"Yeah, and from what she described, I totally I wasn't there to help."

Weiss shook her head in response, but realized Yang wasn't looking at her and spoke up, "No, it's okay."

Honestly, it was probably best Yang hadn't been there. She would have charged forward and gotten webbed into oblivion and... probably wouldn't have made it out.

"And it extra sucks for you guys 'cause while you were getting ambushed by terrifying spoder monsters, I got to listen to adorkable concussed Ruby rambles," Yang smiled.

Weiss cocked an eyebrow at her. "That's a _good_ thing?"

"I mean, yeah! Like I told her to shush while we were all trying to figure out what to do, but when she and I were just chillin', listening to her was hilarious. She thought my hair was killer spaghetti at one point, and, uh… what else?... Oh, she asked me why there was a dune buggy in the drive thru-"

"What?" Weiss choked.

"No idea! But it was funny as heck."

A grin appeared on Weiss' face, but she quickly banished it away. "Still, it was dangerous to get injured like that while on a Hunt," she grumped.

"True. Maybe on the weekends when we're safe at Beacon I can walk up and give her head a smack and we can listen to her spew nonsense for an hour or two."

"Yang, that's terrible!" Weiss gasped, aghast.

Yang just smiled wider. "And it would be totally hilarious!"

"What happened to all that 'gotta protect Ruby' stuff?"

That made Yang squint at her grumpily and purse her lips. "... Fine. No smack…. Maybe we could get her drunk!"

"Yang!"

Yang burst out laughing at that.

The prospect of a drunk Ruby… The only drunk person Weiss had ever seen was her mother, and alcohol tended to make her horny and reckless with no sense of decorum, then depressed, then just plain tired. Plus she was in pain the next morning. Weiss wouldn't want to have to watch Ruby go through any of those things.

"Guys!" Blake's voice called out behind them. They both turned to look and Blake, who was jogging up to them, leaving Ruby with the professor a couple dozen feet back, pointed at an angle. "Adjust course," she teased.

"You wanna lead?" Yang asked, waiting for Blake to catch up before resuming their walk.

"I could," Blake said. "Ruby told me to do the flank scouting though. I can just point you the right way if you drift off course."

"Like a super sexy Siri?" Yang grinned.

Blake batted her eyelashes in response and sauntered off to the side, and Weiss was pretty sure she was walking with her hips more than normal.

Yang was just left staring after her partner's butt with a stupid grin on her face.

"You're both so weird," Weiss muttered.

"What?!" Yang protested. "She's fookin' hawt, mang."

"That's inappropriate," Weiss stated matter-of-factly. Girls weren't supposed to be attracted to other girls. It was one thing to just recognize when another girl looked nice, but she was pretty sure that wasn't what Yang was saying.

"Naw man. I'm just stating truths."

Apparently Yang didn't understand Weiss' point, but Weiss was also fairly certain she wouldn't agree with it. She was one of those… inappropriately minded people. Hadn't she said something to Ruby at that dinner about how liking girls was okay?

Whatever. Yang was wrong about a lot of stuff. There was no need to start an argument about it now.

"By the way!" Yang blurted happily, "I dunno if I told you, but the clothes you got Ruby look super cute. Nice job fashionista…ing. Fashionisting? Fashioning?"

'_Do both of these sisters spend half their conversations making up words?' _Weiss thought to herself with only a little bit of a smile.

"Thank you," she said instead. "It wasn't that hard to find stuff that looks good on her."

"Heh," Yang said in response, glancing at her sideways.

Weiss frowned back in confusion.

A moment passed.

"Mm," Yang grunted. "So when do _I_ get an Ice Queen makeover?"

"Do you _want_ one?" Weiss asked, surprised.

"Sure!" Yang said cheerily. "Sounds like fun. Oooh, and Blake. I bet Blake would look extra sexy in some fancy Weiss clothes. Like a tight fitting black dress? Hmph!"

"Yang, please," Weiss sighed.

Yang laughed heartily. "But yeah, that would be totally cool! Team shopping! Unless… you _like_ clothes shopping, right?"

"Very much!" Weiss answered. She's always enjoyed trying on different outfits, and last weekend she'd found out she enjoyed finding good outfits for others too. So maybe a full team shopping trip _could_ be fun… Er, enjoyable. "Fun" was for children.

"Would you want to?" Yang asked.

Of course Weiss had to give an obligatory pause and act like she needed to consider the idea. In reality, she was getting more and more excited at the prospect as she thought about it. "... Sure," she said, trying to sound reticent. "That could be f-enjoyable."

Yang skipped a step happily like a tall, buff, blonde Ruby. "Sweet!"

This was… a pleasant change from Yang's earlier toxic refusal to let Weiss pay for anything for her and Ruby. Weiss would be very pleased to dump money into the girl's wardrobe if that was a sign that Yang had warmed up to her.

'_Not that Yang needs any warming.'_

Heh. Because… because fire. And Yang.

… Was that a good joke? It seemed humorous to Weiss, but she apparently had a faulty sense of humor… Maybe she should try it out with Ruby, so if it makes her laugh. Assuming she could figure out how to work it into a conversation.

"One o' clock!" Blake called out from… somewhere.

"Isn't it almost two?" Yang shouted to nowhere in particular.

"I mean _turn_ to your one o' clock, ya big oaf!"

"... I knew that," Yang muttered quietly, turning slightly to follow Blake's directions.

"No you didn't!" Blake's voice rang out, somehow still able to hear Yang.

"Shudup!" Yang shouted. "Crap," she whispered to Weiss. "I totally forgot she could hear us. Do you think she heard the thing about the fancy black dress?"

"I-"

"Totally," Blake's voice said at a normal volume from right behind them.

Yang and Weiss both yelped and jumped, turning to find a devilishly grinning Blake that cracked up at their reactions before shadow-double-jumping into the trees above them and disappearing into the branches.

"Drag it," Yang grumbled, staring after her partner with an expression that told Weiss she wasn't actually mad at all.

"I'm surprised you censored yourself," Weiss commented, instinctively straightening her skirt after her flustered reaction to Blake's sudden appearance.

"Yeah dude. Dragons are cool."

Weiss wasn't sure what the logical thread was there. Dragons are cool, so saying an idiom in reference to them was worth not swearing, something Yang tended to do habitually?

"They're also all dead," Weiss pointed out.

"Hey, we don't knooow that," Yang pouted. "They just haven't been seen in… a long time."

"You mean _ever_, other than their skeletons?" Weiss countered.

"Nuh-uh! There are caveman paintings of them, so we must have seen them at _some_ point!"

Weiss hadn't actually heard that. "Where is this?" she asked. It felt weird to be learning something from Yang, but knowledge was knowledge.

"Oh, all sorts of places," Yang explained happily. "There's a cave with some in Patch, actually, not too far from our house! And I read that there are some in Vacuo, too."

"You _read_ about history?" Weiss teased.

"Hey!... Like I said, dragons are cool."

"And you're sure they're caveman paintings?" Weiss pressed.

"Uh, _yeah_? They're all stick-figurey and showed people, like, bowing and kneeling and stuff to big ol' dragons." Yang kinda waved her arms up and down to mimic some sort of prayer flailing.

"No, I mean are you sure they were actually _made_ back then? And not just drawn in later?"

Yang frowned. "Oh… Uh, I dunno."

"What did the article about the ones in Vacuo say?"

At that, Yang scratched her head sheepishly. "Oh, well, uh… I didn't really _read_ the article, per se… Just kinda looked at the pictures…"

Weiss rolled her eyes at that.

"Hey, I read the captions!" Yang said in her defense, like that was a defense.

"And what did they say?"

"... That it was in Vacuo…"

Weiss rolled her eyes even harder.

"Eleven o' clock!" Blake called down from the trees to their right.

"How do we keep getting off course?!" Yang grouched, waving her hands around like an exasperated monkey.

"I blame you," Weiss quipped.

"That's it, time for more hugs."

"Wait, n-hngh!"

An hour passed uneventfully, and for whatever reason the trees started thinning out enough that they could see the sky. The ground become rockier and Weiss suspected the trees were less dense here. And with the clearer view past the foliage, they could all now see the cliffside they were heading for, so Blake could relax on her navigator responsibilities.

"Look," Yang groaned to the group when they had all gathered together, "it's right therrrrre. Can't we just say we got the relic. We _basically_ have!"

With how tired she was now, that sounded like a fine idea to Weiss. Evidently, the entire team agreed, because they all turned to look at Professor Goodwitch hopefully.

She just lifted an eyebrow at them in response.

"Grrrr," Yang groaned.

Blake started forward again. "C'mon, ya baby. Fifteen more minutes, tops."

"Yeah, but then we gotta do a boss fiiiiight," Ruby whined.

"What?!" Weiss squawked. "Where are you getting _that_ from?!"

If the double Nevermore fight didn't count as their 'boss fight', Weiss might have to retire right here and now.

"Well, we _gotta_ end the Hunt with a boss fight," Ruby explained with a 'duh' tone. "That's, like, how it works!"

"That's how _games_ work, Peanut," Yang sighed, reaching over to ruffle Ruby's hair.

"Yeah, well… Professor, did you put the relic in a boss fight spot?"

At that, Professor Goodwitch squinted at the dolt in confusion. "I'm… not sure what qualifies to you as a… boss fight… but it is indeed in a Deathstalker cave."

"Uuuugh," Blake groaned tiredly.

Weiss felt the same. This had been utterly exhausting. She wanted to go shower and then lie down on a cloud for a thousand years, not fight a _Deathstalker_.

"I knew it!" Ruby chirped. "No worries, team! We totally got this!"

"I don't _want_ to 'get this'," Weiss griped, not sure if she should be complaining aloud so she just kind of muttered it to herself.

"I'll just punch it a bunch, it's fine," Yang totally failed to reassure her.

"How'd you even _get_ the relic into a Deathstalker cave?" Blake asked the professor.

"I walked in and placed it there," she answered simply.

"And just walked out?"

"Yes."

"The Deathstalker didn't try to stop you?"

"It _tried_."

Ruby let out a snicker at that. "You're pretty cool, Professor."

Professor Goodwitch smiled lightly. "Thank you. And you may relax, girls. I will handle the Deathstalker for you."

"Oh yay," Blake said quietly.

"You will?" Weiss asked. That sounded wonderful.

Wait, but… "Will we get a lower grade?" she followed up.

"Not at all. You have all demonstrated you're well ahead of the curve of starting first years in Grimm combat. You will already be receiving the highest marks in that regard."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered. "Does this mean we'll get to see you do awesome Dusty magic stuff?"

"Weiss and I already got to see that," Blake taunted her.

"I knooooow! I'm so jealous!"

"I suppose you _will_ get to see some… Dusty magic stuff," the professor agreed.

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered again.

Twelve minutes later, the forest thinned out and there was nothing but orangey-brown rock between the team and the base of the sheer vertical mountainside fifty feet away, where there was indeed a highly suspicious cave. Or maybe it just _felt_ suspicious because of what Weiss now knew about it. At this point, she'd never ever trust any cave anywhere, even if one happened to be in the middle of Vale City.

Stupid Grimm and their stupid caves.

They all stopped at a few feet past the treeline, but Professor Goodwitch kept walking and took a stance a good ways between Team RWBY and the cave.

"Would one of you mind terribly drawing its attention?" she called back to them.

"Uh, how?" Ruby yelled back.

Not turning around, the professor waved a hand about dismissively. "Oh, just shoot one of your silly guns. Make some noise."

Ruby pouted at that, but unholstered her weapon and transformed it into its boxy rifle mode. "Crescent Rose isn't stupid," she grumbled. "Your wand ruler stick thing is shtupid."

Sulkily, she sent a round into the cave, the loud *_CRACK!* _of the gunshot bouncing and echoing off the cliffside.

If there was a Deathstalker in there, they'd certainly gotten its attention.

Professor Goodwitch seemed very calm. Nonchalantly, she opened the clasp of a pouch at her belt and pulled out what looked like a strip of red cloth, then wrapped it around the palm of the hand she held her crop in. Then she pulled out a small Dust crystal whose color Weiss couldn't tell from here and clutched it in her other palm.

Then the Deathstalker came slowly skittering out. A shiver ran down Weiss' spine on seeing one of these things again. They were just… so massive. And evil. And they made Weiss feel small.

And she hated it.

It paused for a moment, clicking its pincers, and it was hard to tell if it was noticing all of them. It definitely saw Professor Goodwitch, though.

With unnerving speed, the monster dashed forward, closing the distance to the stoic huntress.

Professor Goodwitch crushed the Dust crystal in her offhand, a sphere of purple energy appearing in it. Gravity.

Thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet.

Professor Goodwitch flicked her hand out, the gravity ball arcing out and landing right in front of the Deathstalker. As soon as the creature ran over it, the professor splayed her fingers, the ball expanding and slamming into the thing's underbelly. It was lifted off its feet to float a foot above the ground, it's eight legs kicking uselessly.

Professor Goodwitch was imitating Weiss' glyphs with gravity Dust!

Then she flicked back her crop hand. At the same time, the fabric around her hand lit up, strands of fire racing down the professor's "weapon".

Fire Dust cloth.

The lines of fire coalesced and lengthened until Professor Goodwitch held a long, flaming whip in her hand.

"Whooooa," Ruby breathed.

Weiss felt the same. Just like the stuff the professor had done with the gravity Dust in the cave, she hadn't realized _this_ was possible either.

She really needed to get some lessons from Professor Goodwitch.

The professor raised her offhand higher and the Deathstalker echoed the movement, tilting backwards. She lashed out once, twice, the whip of fire scoring the thinner scales of the underbelly, the second strike biting deep enough that black blood started pouring out as the Deathstalker let out a strangled, hissing scream.

Professor Goodwitch closed her fist again and the gravity ball reversed, pulling the Deathstalker down into the ground. She flicked her wrist out again, this time sending her whip of flame wrapping around the middle of the monster's tail.

She pushed outwards and the gravity sphere detonated, pushing the Deathstalker backwards. At the same time, Professor Goodwitch pulled the whip in the other direction.

The rope constricted around the tail and flared a brighter red, then bit through skin in one clean jerk to lop off the stinger.

It didn't hit the ground, though. The fire whip disapparated and Professor Goodwitch pointed her crop at the stinger, using her semblance to make it stop in midair, then slowly move into place above the Deathstalker's head. Or head area. Whatever the face part of a scorpion was called.

The professor pulled out another Dust crystal and crushed it in her empty hand. A purple cylinder appeared around the floating stinger, then extended down to the chittering monster, pushing the front of it into the ground to pin it in place.

The stinger rose up with a movement of the professor's crop, stayed still for a long moment as swirls of violet built up around it, then slammed down into the Deathstalker's head, piercing it through.

A couple seconds later it began dissolving.

"Whoooooa," Ruby said again.

Yang too let out an impressed whistle. "Can you do that, Weiss?"

"Nnnnnope."

"But you can make super mega ice spears!" Ruby chirped, hopping over to stand next to Weiss. Just… trying to be supportive with her presence, Weiss figured.

"I'm sure Professor Goodwitch can do that too. It's not very technically difficult, just powerful. But… that flame whip? That gravity chamber? I have _no _idea how to do that."

At this point, Professor Goodwitch was casually walking back over to them. Er, not casually, per se, as she was still walking with her straight-backed, refined posture, but… Weiss was fairly certain there was a bit of smugness in her step.

It was probably just Weiss' imagination.

"That was awesome, Professor!" Ruby praised her as she came to a stop in front of them.

"Thank you, Miss Rose."

"Are _we_ going to be able to just solo Deathstalkers willy nilly like total badasses when we graduate?" Yang asked.

The professor gave another small smile. "I'm sure you will. Though… as it stands, Miss Belladonna might have a hard time hitting hard enough to deliver a killing blow."

Blake made a disappointed face at that.

The professor waved it away. "Don't worry. I'm sure you will find plenty of ways to add firepower to _all_ your arsenals by the time you graduate."

"Or you could just take me with you everywhere to hit stuff for you," Yang joked, bumping elbows with her partner.

"That wouldn't really be 'soloing' it then, would it," Blake deadpanned back at her.

"Sure it is! I'd just be like a weapon for you. Part of your kit. You can summon ninja shadows and also a Yang!"

Blake smiled and rolled her eyes. "You're ridiculous."

"Yup."

"I'll call in the pickup. Go ahead and retrieve your relic, girls," Professor Goodwitch advised them.

"We win!" Ruby hurrahed, leading the way with a happy skip. The rest of the team followed her.

"I feel like the professor won that for us," Blake pointed out.

"Like I said earlier, you've more than demonstrated your combat capabilities," the professor reminded them.

"We totally _could_ have taken that Deathstalker, though," Yang insisted.

"I'm quite sure you could have. You all have more than enough mobility to handle it. But it's unnecessary, and I'd rather not risk any of you getting hit while so low on aura."

Ruby spun around at that and walked backwards to address the group. "Yeah, my chest hurts a lot. When we get on the plane, can I turn my protective aura off?"

"Of course."

"Why does your _chest_ hurt?" Weiss asked, confused.

"'Cause I'm low on aura, silly," Ruby answered.

"But… your chest?"

"Different people have their aura cores located in different places, Miss Schnee," Professor Goodwitch explained.

"Really?"

"Yep!" Ruby chirped. "Mine's my heart. "Yang's is her stomach."

Blake snorted at that.

"Shudup!" Yang protested. "What's yours, your butt?"

"... The base of my spine," Blake hedged.

"Ha!" Yang triumphed. "Yourrrr a butt caster."

"Am not!"

"What's yours, Weiss?" Ruby asked before slightly tripping and stumbling backwards. She chuckled sheepishly and turned to face the right way, waiting for the rest of them to catch up before falling into step beside Weiss.

"My head," Weiss answered.

"Figures," Ruby grinned at her.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Ruby blanched. "Nothing! I just meant you're super smart and brainy and stuff!"

"Oh. That's okay then."

At that, Ruby's smile returned.

Weiss supposed the same was also true of Ruby. It figures that the dolt's power would come from her heart.

They got to the entrance of the cave, and Weiss slowed down warily, but Ruby headed right on in.

There wouldn't be extra Deathstalkers in here, would there?

Apparently conscious of the same thing but far less concerned about it, Yang cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled into the cave, "Hello!"

"Hello! Hello! Hello!" the cave echoed back.

They all, even Ruby, stopped to wait for something to happen.

… Nothing did.

Ruby shrugged and continued forward. "We really shoulda brought some light with us, huh," she remarked as she wandered into the dark.

"I wasn't expecting so many of these stupid caves," Blake muttered.

It was good to know Weiss wasn't the only anti-cavist here.

"I have some fire Dust rounds?" Yang offered. "Weiss, can you, like, make magic-y candles out of this or something?"

"Not if you already attuned to it," Weiss answered.

"Oh crap. Right."

"Weiss, isn't your ice Dust all glowy and bright when you use it?" Ruby asked.

"I… suppose it is, yes." Weiss hadn't ever considered that. What would cause that? Her high affinity for ice making the aura resonate with the Dust's magic? "Should I… make a big block of ice or something?"

Why was she so uncreative?

"Mmmm… Can you make a bunch of glowy snowflakes or something and send them in here?" Ruby asked. "Like, spread them out and stuff. We'd at least be able to see the ground that way."

"Sure!" Weiss said eagerly. That was a pretty smart idea, and it meant Weiss got to help more and be relevant.

She sent a little bit of aura from her head down to her sword, triggering the ice Dust. Then she slowly waved Myrtenaster above her head, _willing_ the Dust to form tiny little crystals that formed an arch above her. She flicked Myrtenaster forward and the twinkling stars of ice obeyed, floating into the cave and providing some points of light-not really much illumination-as the slowly floated down to the ground.

"That's really pretty," Blake commented, making Weiss smile with pride.

"It's SUPER pretty!" Ruby corrected excitedly, rushing up to spin around in the suspended crystals as they drifted forward and down.

"Ow! Wait, ow!" she yelped, jumping back. "They're pokeeeeey!" she whined.

"They're crystals of magical ice, Ruby," Weiss explained patiently.

"But Wei-eiss!"

"What?!"

"I wanna make a snow angel in your snowflakes and I don't want 'em to poke me!"

"Well… tough."

"Waaah!"

"Go get the relic, you little idiot," Yang sighed, rolling her eyes.

Weiss looked around to see if Yang had spotted it.

Nothing, really.

She pushed the ice flecks further into the cave…

Ah! There it was, a knight chess piece (that was probably white considering how blue it looked in this lighting) sitting on a waist high platform of stone jutting from the ground.

As soon as it was visible, Ruby zipped forward, adding a swirl of petals to the ice crystals in the air. Weiss probably would have been grumpy at her for wasting aura, but the sight was so pretty…

Suddenly, Ruby was standing in front of them again, holding the white knight piece high.

"We _did_ it, team!" she cheered.

"Durn straight," Yang grinned, hugging her sister and picking her up off the ground. "You two, get over here," she said to Weiss and Blake. "Team hug."

"No!" Weiss protested instinctively.

Blake just smiled coyly at her partner and shook her head.

Yang narrowed her eyes at Blake. "Ruby, go grab your partner and drag her over here."

"No!" Weiss protested again. If _Ruby_ was the one coming after her, there was no way she could avoi-

"Got her!" Ruby chirped, her arms somehow already wrapped around Weiss, bringing a shower of petals and the scent of roses with her.

"Grr," Weiss growled at her.

Ruby just giggled.

"Blake, come here," Yang ordered, a teasing smile on her lips as she pointed at the ground in front of her.

Now it was Blake's turn to glare at Yang. "You did _not_ just try that."

Weiss wasn't sure what that meant.

Yang was undeterred, though, still wearing that goofy grin. "Don't make _me_ come over _there_, Missy."

Blake crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow in response.

Accepting the challenge, Yang walked up to her slowly, then stopped when she was a foot away. She paused for a moment, then reached out and around with both arms to try to grab Blake in a hug with a loud, "Aha!"

Her arms wrapped around nothing but thick, black smoke. Blake was now standing behind her, arms still crossed, eyebrow still raised, now looking particularly unimpressed.

Weiss had to blink and jerk back, her brain struggling to make sense of what she'd just seen. It was like watching some sort of animation glitch or something, like the "frame lag" that Ruby sometimes pointed out whenever Huntsman Royale 2 bugged out and things teleported across the screen.

"Aagh!" Yang blurted in dismay, spinning around like she knew exactly where Blake had gone.

Weiss got the feeling that this was a thing these two had done before.

Again, nothing but shadowy Blake silhouette.

"Ehraaaack! Let me! Hug you! Demmit!" Every pause was accompanied by a hug attempt. The last one, Yang even got tricky and spun to hug behind her, but Blake just simply stayed where she was and Yang ended up grabbing nothing but air.

Blake smirked, a bemused snort coming out of her.

"Shudup!" Yang squeaked, diving once again at her partner.

This time, Blake made no effort to dodge, and soon she was getting squished by a buffoon and getting lifted off the ground.

"I got you!" Yang exclaimed triumphantly.

"Oh nooo," Blake drawled, deadpan. "However did you manage to do that." ._.

"What can I say?" Yang gloated, "I am the Fast." She spun around to carry her captured prize back over to Weiss and Ruby, but Weiss was able to catch Blake's eye roll and smile before her face disappeared from view.

"Team hug!" Yang declared again, setting Blake down next to Ruby but keeping a hand at her waist.

"Woooo!" Ruby agreed simply, taking one of her arms from around Weiss and throwing it around Blake.

Yang followed by throwing her arm around Weiss.

Weiss and Blake just blinked at each other, Blake deadpan, Weiss puffing out her lower lip slightly. She was displeased! It needed to be known.

"I said _team_ hug!" Yang chastised them. "Not 'Ruby and Yang hug while Blake and Weiss stand there like vegetables'."

At that, Blake's stoic composure broke and she let out a giggle before putting her arms around Ruby and Yang's backs.

Weiss sighed and accepted defeat. There would be no escaping this.

She hugged Ruby and Yang, and when her arms brushed Blake's, Blake gave her hands a couple friendly pats.

This was _way_ too much physical contact.

"_There_ we go," Yang said approvingly, Ruby nodding happily in agreement.

"Weeeeeeee did it, team!" Ruby chirped again.

"This was the best first Hunt any team has ever had, easy," Yang declared.

"But you haven't seen anyone else's first Hunts," Weiss pointed out.

"So?"

"Sooooo…. how can you make any assertions about the quality of our Hunt with no basis for comparison?"

Yang just blinked at her. "Uh, 'cause we're the best?"

"But-"

"Weiss."

Weiss turned to look at Blake, who met her eyes and just shook her head with another small smile.

'_Yeah. Not worth the fight.'_

"Yang, does this mean I can have my nose back?" Ruby asked, giving her sister a light kick to the shinas she asked.

"No!"

"But we woooooon!" Ruby cried.

"No nose and no cookies until you've had time to think about what you did and how dumb you were getting yourself bodyslammed by the ground."

"No COOKIES?!" Ruby shrieked.

"Ruby please, my ears," Weiss sighed.

"But I wanna go get more awesome Weiss cookies tomorroooow," Ruby lamented, giving her sister one of her signature pouts.

"Oh?" Weiss said in surprise. A day of relaxing out in the city again could be nice after this debacle. Would a Saturday trip to Wafer's Treats just become a thing they did? A regular schedule was something Weiss greatly appreciated, and having a scheduled, known relaxation thing to do and look forward to would be wonderful. Assuming, of course, that Weiss worked hard and well enough over the week to make sure she deserved Wafer's pastries on the weekend.

Ruby's puppy dog eyes made Weiss want to go place an order for the strawberry shortcake cookies immediately, but Yang apparently hadn't been kidding when she said she was inoculated to the powers of the Ruby Pout.

"You can go get whatever cookies you want, but no eating them until you've learned your lesson. You'll just have to stare at them. Longingly."

"But I diiiiiiiiiid!" Ruby whined in reply. She jumped up and forced Weiss and Blake to hold her upright as she sent a flurry of petulant little kicks at Yang. "I'll never ever mess up an epic superhero landing ever again!"

"You shouldn't be _trying_ any in the first place, ya mook!" Yang exclaimed. "You can _fly_!"

Ruby pouted again and (thankfully) set her feet back down on the ground. "Your _face_ is a mook," she whispered to her toes.

"Don't be a crybaby. We just aced our first Hunt! We should celebrate." She threw her hands up in the air at that, and everyone seemed to take that as the cue to break off the group hug.

"Celebrate without cookies?" Ruby grumped.

"Yeah! With _alcohol_!"

"Yang-uh, we're not old enough!"

"Psh, whatever."

"What makes you think we aced this?" Weiss asked, bothered by the second grandiose assumption Yang had made in as many minutes.

"I dunno why you're not getting this, Weiss," Yang patronized her. "We're awesome. Besides, have you seen my hair? No way dis gloriousness deserves anything less than a one hundred."

"I… wha… okay…"

Blake let out one her of little giggles, then reached up to give the ends of Yang's hair a flick. "It _is_ very nice hair. If hair-awesomeness is a metric the professors are grading on this Hunt-for whatever reason-I'm sure you'll snag us an A in that category."

Yang smiled widely, cheeks going slightly pink, but Ruby let out a gasp.

"Blake! Don't touch her hair! She'll bop you in da nose!"

The warning didn't seem to bother Blake at all. She just smiled and said, "Naaah," then gave Yang's hair another little double flick.

Yang did not make any attempts to bop Blake in the nose.

"Girls," Professor Goodwitch called to them from the middle of the clearing in front of the cave. They all broke off to walk over to her.

"Our pick up shall be here momentarily," she informed them as they approached. "While we wait, tell me: how are you all feeling about your Hunt?"

"Awesome!" Ruby and Yang both answered excitedly. Weiss nodded in agreement. She _was_ feeling pretty good about this Hunt. The beginning had been… rough, and the middle had been… rough… but at least by the end Weiss felt like she was capable of doing this huntress thing.

Probably.

"More importantly, how did _you_ feel about our Hunt?" Blake asked.

That made Professor Goodwitch frown a little bit. "While I understand what you mean, Miss Belladonna, how _you_ all feel about yourselves is still far more important than the grade I give you."

"Oh. Okay," Blake replied, a little surprised at the answer.

"Though on that note," the professor continued, "we shall be meeting on Sunday with Professor Ozpin and talking about how you did and going over the video together."

"Video?" they all asked at once.

The professor tapped what Weiss had assumed was a button on her lapel.

'_Oh no.'_

Weiss… had tripped… right at the start of the Hunt… right in front of the professor… and they were all going to be watching the video together… with the headmaster…

She wasn't sure it was possible for her to go paler, but she definitely felt like she had, and her stomach sank to her toes.

"Did you get us totally destroying those Neverbutts?!" Ruby asked with a bounce.

"I did."

"Woohoooo!"

At that moment, the low hum of a Chariot reached them, and a few moments later it appeared, flying low over the forest, its engines making the upper branches of the trees bend away. It landed, its back to them, the gravity pulses from those engines making Weiss' hair and clothes flap around like they were standing in a hurricane.

There was a hiss and the loading ramp hissed open to reveal Team KORL and Professor Oobleck sitting there on the left side again, waiting.

"Sup, slowpokes!" Leona greeted them.

"Awwww, how'd you beat us?!" Ruby protested, skipping on board to the same seat she'd sat in on their previous flight.

"Told ya, Ori's a hacker," Karn answered. "We just followed her and got there. Took out some Beowolves and Boarbatusks and a couple Ursai along the way." He said the last part like a gloat.

"And a bunch of Grabbits!" Remus added.

"Oh you sweet summer child," Yang grinned, sitting down herself and strapping in.

"Whadaya mean?"

"I mean it woulda been nice if _all_ we had to deal with is tiny, puny Grimm like that," Yang grinned.

"W-what did you guys run into?" Orianna asked.

It was Blake that answered. "Oh, you know, a pack of Beowolves and Ursa."

Leona frowned. "... Yeah, same."

"Also an Elder Weaver. And it's entire Hive. And two Nevermores. At the same time."

Team KORL all blinked, looked at each other, then looked at Professor Goodwitch as she took her seat.

"It's true," she stated simply.

"Also a Deathstalker," Yang added, "that we _totally_ could have killed, but Professor Goodwitch killed it 'cause we were kinda beat up. You know, by the two Nevermores that we killed. At the same time."

"Well that was kind of you, Glynda," Professor Oobleck told her.

"Uh, her first name is Professor," Ruby joked.

"Ya'll are full of shit," Karn accused Yang, smiling.

"Language, Mister Ammolite," Professor Goodwitch sighed.

"Nope!" Ruby chirped. "One hundred percent real!"

"But… how though?" Orianna asked.

Everyone was on board and strapped in now and the loading ramp closed back up.

"Well, fellow Huntsmen," Ruby began dramatically, "let me tell you a story…"

The Chariot lifted off with a jerk, and they were heading back to Beacon with Ruby excitedly providing a ridiculously grandiose version of the last six hours.

Weiss breathed a sigh of relief. She'd made it through her first Hunt.

* * *

**Happy Thanksgiving to all my Murican readers. To everyone else, happy random Thursday of no cultural import!**

**Chapter's only 9k words but it still took me a while because I got distracted with the Star Wars game and then the public impeachment hearings. America is pretty fucked, yo. I really want to put some political shitiness in this story, but also I literally could not make up half the shit that the Cheeto in Chief has said and done. Shit is wild. **

**Also, wanted to get everyone's opinions on how they would feel if this story moved in a slightly different direction, adding in Blake and Yang POV chapters. One of my readers wants it more than oxygen and I feel like it could be neat, but also am not sure I can make their voices sound distinct and unique. So... gimme your thoughts!**

**Also, hope you have enjoyed Team RWBY's first Hunt! **


	35. Hunting 3-7

Ruby woke up on her own, a weird experience after the past couple weeks of being woken up by Weiss getting ready for the day. She rubbed the sleepy goobers out of her eyes and just spent a good long while enjoying laying in her bed. She flipped and moved her pillows around a bit to get to the cold, comfy parts, and restacked them so she had two under her head again. For whatever reason, the top pillow always seemed to wander off at night. And of course she hugged her third pillow, and squished the fourth between her knees.

Pillows were nice.

Her muscles were _still_ sore from yesterday, though now that she was awake and her aura was mostly back, they'd probably get better soon.

After a little while, Ruby felt like she'd gotten enough resties that she could get up. Rolling around to find her scroll-today it was somehow inside the pillowcase she'd been hugging-she checked the time.

9:44

Early. Sooo early. Why was she waking up so early nowadays?

Dumb Weiss and her ridonculous schedule!

Speaking of which, Weiss totally should have woken her up already! What de heck! She was probably off playing music on the roof like an edgy princess.

Ruby hopped down from her bunk, cracked her knuckles in preparation for waking up Yang, and-

The sound of shuffling sheets announced itself behind her.

'_Huh?'_

Ruby turned around.

… Weiss was still in bed!

What kind of cruel world was this where Ruby was waking up before Weiss now?

She knelt down in front of Weiss' bed. Weiss was on her side, facing the wall, breathing quietly, bein' all princessy even in her sleep.

"Hoy!" Ruby whispered, reaching over to give Weiss' shoulder the lightest shake possible. It would probably take a _lot_ less to wake up Weiss than it does Yang, who always took at least three almost-punches.

Sure enough, the little shake was enough to make Weiss roll over. Ruby froze, waiting for Weiss' eyes to open, but they didn't. She just kinda smacked her lips together a couple times and settled back down into her pillow.

Ruby gave her pretty, pointy nose a poke. "Weiss!" she whispered. "Hey!"

Weiss' eyebrows scrunched up and she puffed out her outer lip ever so slightly, slowly opening her eyes about ten percent.

"Hmm?"

"Hey, Weiss!" Ruby greeted her, still whispering.

".. Why you wakin' merrup?" Weiss mumbled back at her.

Sleepy Weiss was so cute! Hearing Weiss be all mumbly and unrefined was really funny.

"It's almost ten," Ruby answered. "You sleep through your alarm?"

Rubbing at her eyes, Weiss gave her another princessy pout. "... Nooo. I jusss… wanna sleep. I'm… slehppy."

From the way her slow blinks were getting smaller and smaller, it seemed like Weiss was falling back to sleep. Ruby couldn't help it, she giggled.

The noise apparently disturbed Weiss, though, because she opened her eyes back up a bit to give Ruby a squinty glare.

Ruby smiled back, which just made Weiss pout at her again.

"So no going running today?" Ruby asked.

"I shaid I'm tiiiired," Weiss whined at her, making Ruby giggle again.

"Ugh," Weiss grumped. She pushed herself up on one arm, but then seemed to give up halfway through and slumped back down on her side. She let out a dismayed, "Hnnngh."

"Same," Ruby agreed.

"Whadoyou want, dolt?" Weiss groaned.

"Nothing," Ruby said, giving Weiss' hand a pat and standing back up. "I'll let you schlep."

"Mm hrmph," Weiss replied, closing her eyes again.

Ruby headed to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, humming as she scrubbed her chompers with Toothy von Brushmeister. She'd also given Weiss' toothbrush a name, Mr. Bristles, but she kept forgetting to tell Weiss about it. And maybe Weiss already had a name for her toothbrush.

… Probably not, though.

She'd already showered last night after their hunt, and a quick sniff confirmed that she still smelled like Ocean Spray soap and roses, so she headed to her desk. Being extra careful to be quiet, she pulled out a notebook and started sketching the latest conquest of General Flappy Feet! In this episode, he and Pengu Squad were going to bring down two Nevermores and a Deathstalker all by themselves, all while Admiral Zymdood was being evil and nefarious in the background shooting at them with a shrink ray.

Although… when she got to the first Nevermore, she realized that maybe drawing giant birds was harder than she thought. Where… where did the feet go again? Like, obviously at the bottom, but like… where did they go between the wings and the tail? More on the tail side or more on the wing side?

…

Screw it, they'll go here! Sure, that looks right.

As she continued drawing the Nevermore, the feet started looking less and less right.

Whatever, it was a cartoon!

… Maybe only one Nevermore though.

She also decided that General Flappy Feet and the Pengu Squad were due for some weapons upgrades. Perhaps, before mission debrief, they got outfitted with new, uber, experimental weapons!

The general was given the best weapon, of course, a giant mega epic scythe that was also a sniper rifle. And… also had epic Dust ports in the blade so it could do awesome wind slashes and fire slashes and lightning… does lightning slash?

Hm… Maybe Weiss could help her figure that out.

Speaking of Crescent Rose!

Ruby tiptoed over to her bunk and grabbed her scroll and sent a message to Dad. She and Yang had bragged to him for like a billion hours about how awesome their Hunt had went last night, but when Ruby had asked him to send the blueprints of Crescent Rose so she could fix it, he said he'd been out on a walk with Zwei and would send them when he got home.

And of course he'd forgotten. 'Cause he was Dad, and dads do be like that sometimes.

Me: Hey, DaddyO. Can u send pics of the blueprints when u wake up?

That done, she went back to her drawing, giving the members of the Pengu squad their own cool weapons: a rapier with a revolver cylinder full of Dust (that was really freaking hard to draw), a double… sword… hand scythe… machine pistol… whip… thing… (?), and fancy metal gloves. With shotguns.

She made sure to give the shotgun gauntlets to the Pengu getting hit with the shrink ray, because tiny, grumpy, penguin Yang was funny as heck.

Ten minutes into Ruby's doodles, Weiss woke up for real for realz, shuffling into the bathroom and brushing her teeth and doing her fancy girl face wash ritual thing. By the time she came back out, Ruby was on the Deathstalker, which wasn't any easier to draw than the Nevermore was.

She walked up behind Ruby's chair and peeked over Ruby's head to check out her drawing. "Oh no, General Flappadoodle stole Crescent Rose!" she exclaimed softly.

When Ruby giggled this time, tilting her head back to look up at her partner, Weiss gave her one of those tiny, wonderful Weiss smiles back before settling down in her seat next to Ruby's.

"First of all," Ruby stated matter-of-factly, "his name is General _Flappy Feet._"

"Ah. My apologies. I did not mean to offend the general," Weiss replied, totally straight-faced.

"Yeah, and _second_, this isn't Crescent Rose, silly. It's a duplicate, _obviously_. His reward for valorous conduct in combat. They were all like, 'General Feet, sir, we'd like to give you this medal of honor,' and he was like, 'I'm honored, Mister… Whoever, but I'd much rather have the weapon that one super awesome huntress, the Great Ruby Rose, uses,' and they said… 'ok.'"

"Obviously," Weiss nodded.

Ruby nodded back.

"And who's the penguin with that very stylish cycling rapier over there that's poking that alien in the face?"

"Oh, uh… I haven't actually given the Pengu Squad names… yet."

Weiss made a hitched snorting-laugh noise. "Pengu Squad?" she grinned.

"Yeah! I was gonna name them Team PNGU - you know, P-N-G-U - but coming up with names is hard."

"Especially if you're trying to come up with names as extravagant as 'Flappy Feet'," Weiss commented.

"Exactly!" It was nice that Weiss understood.

"And is that supposed to be a Nevermore?"

"... Maybe."

Weiss nodded and looked at her currently empty desk for a moment, then looked back over at Ruby's drawing. "What's going on with its feet?"

Ruby thumped her pencil down dramatically. "Look! Birds are hard, okay?!"

Weiss raised her hands innocently. "I'm just saying, if it has some kind of medical condition or something…"

Ruby pouted at her, but that just made Weiss give her an adorably mischievous grin in response.

"Maybe _you_ should try drawing one," Ruby challenged her. Then an idea popped into her head. "Gasp! Can you make, like, a fancy oil painting version of my doodle?!"

For a second, Ruby thought maybe Weiss didn't understand her from the blank look she was getting.

"... That's the most ridiculous thing you've ever said to me."

Ruby balked. "What?! No way! I've said _way_ more ridiculous things… I think."

Weiss 'hmmed' thoughtfully, tilting her head like a birdy. "You're probably right. I'm sure I'm forgetting something."

"Nani?!" Ruby exclaimed, giving her best horrified face. "You? Forget things?! That's impossibru!"

Weiss nodded solemnly. "I know. It sounds crazy. But you just say _so_ _many _dumb things, it's probable I've lost track of some of them."

"Wow, dat's so rood," Ruby grumped, giving another pout that, _again_, just made Weiss smile.

She sat in silence, looking all thoughtful for a second, and Ruby waited because it seemed like she was going to get a response.

Then Weiss sorta nodded to herself like she'd come to some big decision and said, "You know, I _have _painted something with the paints you got me."

"Whaaat?!" Ruby squealed. "No way! Lemme see-aaack!"

Ruby tilted sideways as a pillow hurtled into her face at comet speeds.

"Too _loud_!" Yang grumbled from her bed, rolling back over.

"Whaaat?!" Ruby whisper-squealed at Weiss again. "Lemme see!"

Weiss frowned a little bit, looking like she regretted where this had gone. Then she sighed and reached down to the space between her desk and the wall.

Ruby filed that spot away as 'place Weiss might hide cute things' for later.

When Weiss showed her the painting, though, 'cute' was not one of the words that came to mind. 'Gorgeous', 'incredible', 'perfect', sure. 'Cause… holy crap.

It was a painting of Beacon! It was set like Ruby was standing at the far end of Beacon Bridge, looking at the school that stood on its island in front of a bright, lightly clouded sky.

And it. Was.

AWESOME!

"Holy _crap_, Weiss!" Ruby once again whisper-squealed. "This is _amazing_! When did you make this?!"

The compliment made Weiss beam a little bit before she wiped the expression away and replaced it with her ever-so-slightly scrunched eyebrows. "While you and Yang were at the windball game. And it's just okay. I messed up a bunch."

"... _Where_?" Ruby asked, completely miffed. This painting was amazing!

"Beacon looks flat," Weiss grumbled, frowning at her art. "I need to add more shadows but I know I'll just mess it up. And the clouds look like cotton balls that got brutally murdered on top of the canvas."

Ruby couldn't help giggling at that description.

That prompted a slight smile from Weiss before she continued hating on her awesome work. "And this spire isn't symmetrical," she sighed. "And the island looks terrible. The colors are literally _all_ wrong."

"Weiss! Stahp it! The colors are amazing. The whole thing is amazing. _You're_ amazing!"

Weiss pouted at her.

Ruby wasn't sure Weiss knew what pouts were supposed to be for.

'_Screw it.'_

Ruby settled for the tried and true Cheer-'Em-Up method: a good ol' hug.

A surprised "Hngh!" got squeezed out of Weiss, but she didn't try to push Ruby away or tell her to let go.

"... Thanks," Weiss said quietly.

Ruby let her go to give her a big smile, then turned back to the painting. She pointed to the top of Beacon Tower. "You should put a tiny huntress silhouette right there. Maybe one with, like, a cape or something. And maybe a scythe. You know, something super cool like that."

When she turned back to Weiss, she found Weiss playfully glaring at her.

"You're dumb," she stated flatly.

"No you!"

Weiss rolled her eyes halfway and looked back at her artwork. "You'd be too small to show up though."

"Just make me bigger!" Ruby answered. "Or, you know, make the mysterious, supercool huntress with a cape and scythe bigger."

Weiss blinked at her.

Ruby's laugh turned into a yawn, and she stretched her arms over her head. She tank top pulled up, but when her yawn was done and she reached to pull it back down, she froze as her stomach growled at her. LOUD.

She looked over at Weiss, who-yep. Weiss' eyes were wide and she was fighting down a grin, glancing at Ruby's stomach, then face, then stomach, then face.

"You… okay over there?" she asked.

"I might be a lil' bit hungry," Ruby answered. She reached down to pull her-

Her stomach growled again.

"Or maybe my tummy just wants to be free and shirtless," she concluded.

"The logic is undeniable," Weiss drawled. She stood up. "C'mon then, let's get you some breakfast."

"Are you hungry too?" Ruby asked, hopping up to follow.

"A little bit. I could eat some fruit. We still have some of those avocados we got on Wednesday, right? Or did Blake eat them all already?"

"Uh, Weiss? Avocados are _vegetables_."

"What?" Weiss exclaimed as she held the door open for Ruby. "They definitely are not."

"But they're green!" Ruby said, skipping ahead and down the hallway.

Weiss stopped abruptly to stare at Ruby with a 'for real?' face-or at least, the very subdued Weiss version of a 'for real' face. Then she shook her head and fell into step beside Ruby.

"You're right," she said. "I forgot about that. Like how green grapes are vegetables."

"Yeah! Wait…" That didn't sound right.

Weiss snorted a laugh as Ruby contemplated her views of fruits and vegetables.

They got to the kitchen and there were indeed a couple avocados in the bowl tucked in the corner of the counter that had survived Blake's ruthless purge. Ruby rosed over to them and grabbed one, and came back to Weiss, bowing a little bit and holding it out like a ceremonial offering.

"Your fregetable, your highness!"

Weiss made her bottom lip puff out and the corners pull down a bit like a frown, but it looked like a goofy smile more than like she was actually grumpy. "Thank you, dolt," she said, taking the avocado gingerly. "Could you get me a knife and spoon?" she requested, taking a seat at the counter.

Ruby obliged, rushing around in a flurry of rose petals.

"Oh, and the salt?"

Another rose-splosion.

Weiss smiled at Ruby and patted the hand that Ruby held the salt shaker in.

"Thank you!" she sang.

Woohoo! Happy Weiss was so nice.

Ruby got herself some breakfast (big ol' bowl of Admiral Munch and milk, of course) and joined Weiss, sitting on the tall barstool next to her and kicking her feet happily.

"So we're going for cookies _before_ clothes shopping, right?" she asked.

Yang had apparently really liked the outfits Weiss had gotten Ruby last weekend and wanted to do some fancy clothes shopping of her own. Before, Ruby wouldn't have wanted to go shopping again so soon, but she'd actually had a lot of fun picking outfits with Weiss! And Weiss had enjoyed it _a lot_. So doing it with the whole team just seemed like an awesome upgrade! Especially since Weiss and Blake were getting along better now.

Weiss rolled her eyes a little. "Sure, Ruby. Cookies first. We-what time is it?" A quick check with her scroll told them it was a bit past ten. "Oof, I slept in," Weiss muttered to herself. "But yes, we could get to Wafer's Treats by noon again. Keep a consistent schedule and whatnot.

Ruby wrinkled her nose at that. She was happy to go get cookies at noon, but if it was part of a schedule? Noooo. Now it felt like an obligation instead of a treat!

"Why are you doing that?" Weiss demanded.

"Doing what?"

Weiss pointed a princess finger at Ruby's nose. "That."

Ruby crossed her eyes trying to look down at her nose. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're wrinkling your nose!" Weiss proclaimed incredulously, like she actually believed Ruby didn't know what she was talking about.

"That's not possibru, Weiss," Ruby explained gently. "Yang still has my nose."

Weiss just stared at her, blank-faced, for a moment, then huffed and rolled her eyes, turning back to her avocado.

They'd only been eating and chatting for a bit when Yang and Blake shuffled down the hallway to join them. Yang gave Ruby's hair an obligatory earthquake with her hands as she passed by, mumbling "Myernin, goobers." Blake lingered at the counter and seemed to be internally debating what she wanted to eat, if anything.

She glanced at Weiss' avocado, then over at the last survivor in the bowl across the kitchen. Weiss noticed and narrowed her eyes at the ninja.

They had a little glare-off for a long moment.

Finally, Blake pointed at the last one. "You gonna eat that?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes even more. "I'm sure I will eventually."

"But, like, are you gonna eat it _now_?"

"I might."

One of Blake's eyebrows quirked up. "You're not just saying that so that I won't eat it now?"

Weiss acted all offended. "No! I'm actually very hungry! Yesterday was exhausting."

They were interrupted by the clatter of a pan from Yang. "You need _protein_ for that, Ice Queen. Not more froo-froos."

"It's pronounced 'fruit'," Weiss replied, deadpan.

Yang pointed a pair of tongs at her. "It's pronounced 'not gonna give you any muscle mass or help your body recoup from the muscle tearing it received yesterday'."

"... Seems like a mouthful," Blake commented dryly.

Weiss laughed, one of those real laughs that sounded like really happy wind chimes.

"Yeah," Yang snarked back, "so you might as well eat some meat instead. Easier to say. So whachu girls want today: bacon or snausages?"

"Snausages!" Ruby cheered. She'd finished up her Admiral Munch, now it was time for the _real_ breakfast. The Yang breakfast.

"Snausages it is."

"What if you don't want either?" Weiss grumbled.

"Well then that sucks," Yang answered. "Still gotta eat 'em."

"No I don't!"

"Yeah you do. Ruby said so. And she's captain, you gotta listen to her."

"No she didn't!"

"_You_ don't even listen to her half the time," Blake pointed out to Yang.

Yang shrugged. "Yeah, well, she talks a lot. I miss some stuff."

"Hey!" Ruby chirped.

"Tell you what, Weiss," Yang continued, "I'm gonna make you a delicious breakfast snausage and put it on a plate in front of you. If you smell it and don't like it or you want to just let my hard work in the kitchen just go to waste, then you don't have to eat it. But the rest of us will, and you'll look like a total dork if you don't."

"Are you guilt tripping her _and_ peer pressuring her into eating food?" Blake asked.

Yang shrugged again. "Gotta go for the shotgun approach. Still not sure what works on her. I'm not the Weiss Whisperer like Rubes."

Ruby smiled brightly at that and looked at Weiss, who frowned back at her adorably.

"That's not a thing," she huffed.

"Ruby, tell her to eat her protein," Yang ordered.

"Weiss," Ruby declared, straightening her back and raising her chin to speak with officialness, "I promise you'll like the snausages and they'll be good for you and also delicious and also Yang is good at cooking and also they'll be very yummy." She finished with another big smile.

Weiss just looked at her for a long moment, thinking, then sighed and half-rolled her eyes, going back to her avocado. "You basically said the same thing three times."

"That's a yes!" Ruby cheered to her sister.

"If you say so," Yang replied.

Sizzles and pops soon filled the air as Yang cooked breakfast. She added some toast to the menu, spreading on the fancy peach jam that Blake had wanted to get on their shopping trip.

"Sorry, you should really have hash browns with breakfast sausage, but I'm way too sleepy to make that right now," Yang told them.

"Yang, you're making us breakfast," Blake said kindly. "Don't apologize."

"Oh. It was a figurative sorry. I'm not really sorry."

Blake's throat hitched with a laugh.

"Wadabout oatmeal?" Ruby asked, perking up. Oatmeal (with lots of sugar) was awesome!

"I don't think we have anyyy…" Yang answered, starting to search through the cupboards as she spoke. "Oh hey, that's a thing," she said, pulling a big tub of oatmeal down. "This isn't ours, is it?"

"Pretty sure it's Sky's," Blake told her. "Or at least, I saw him making some."

"Not ours," Weiss concluded.

"Mph," Yang agreed. "Sorry, Rubes. Maybe we can pick some up today."

"Assuming you don't spend all day trying on different crop tops and checking yourself out in the changing room," Ruby grinned. She'd been shopping with Yang enough to know how today was gonna go.

"I don't do that!" Yang protested, turning rosy red in the cheeks.

"I swear, if we go to Cerise Moran's and you ask for all their crop tops, I'm gonna make you into a sausage," Weiss threatened.

"But there were a couple cute crop tops there!" Ruby protested. She hadn't wanted them because, you know, crop tops seem scary to wear, but Yang would like them.

"Sssshh!" Weiss hissed at her.

"Wow, Weiss. Hating on true fashion, are ya?" Yang teased.

"She's just jealous of your abs," Blake deduced.

"As if," Weiss shot back.

"It's okay, Weiss. It's understandable," Yang teased. She patted her stomach proudly.

"I hate all of you," Weiss grumbled to her avocado.

"Not me, though!" Ruby sang out.

"No, not you," Weiss agreed.

Woohoo! Ruby was no longer getting blacklisted for being related to Yang! That means she was Weisslisted! xD

'... _Okay, maybe don't say that one out loud.'_

Not too long after that, Yang was serving them all plates with toast and snausages (Weiss cut her toast down the middle and gave one half to Ruby, muttering something about carbs).

And lo and behold, even after all her grumping, Weiss did indeed like the sausage. Not that she admitted it so bluntly.

"It's okay," she admitted before quickly taking another bite.

"Uh huh," Yang said, clearly not impressed with Weiss' bluff.

"... Mehbe a lil' be'er than ohckay," she amended, covering her mouth with her hand as she spoke.

Yang crossed her arms triumphantly, then held one hand out to fist bump Blake.

"Mm, that smells good," someone said from the far end of the room. Ruby turned to see Remus walking into the room with Orianna. "You make any for us?" Remus added.

"That's a negative, Ghost Rider," Yang told him.

"Darn, shoulda come out earlier," Ori muttered.

"Good morning!" someone new said from the _other_ end of the room. Ruby turned her head upside down to see Pyrrha and Nora entering the living area too.

"Ah!" Ruby chirped. "So many people! There are huntresses coming out of the walls!"

"Could you imagine if there were, like, Grimm termites?" Remus mused, opening the fridge to grab a couple bananas for himself and Ori.

'_People keep bananas in the fridge?'_

"Maybe there are and we just haven't seen them," Nora said, skipping in and leaning over Blake's plate to inspect her breakfast. "That smells good. Can I have one?"

Pyrrha grabbed the back of Nora's shirt and dragged the girl towards the table. "Stop pestering people for their food, Nora," she sighed.

"But I _wanna_ pester!" she protested, waving her arms as she was dragged across the floor.

"That's the most Nora sentence I've ever heard," Blake quipped, making Pyrrha and Yang laugh.

"Ooh, nobody told me there was a babe convention in the kitchen," yet another new voice drawled from the other other side.

Cardin.

"Are you physically capable of _not_ being a pig?" Weiss sneered at him.

He just snorted. "Fine, _you're_ not a babe."

"Oh no."

He shrugged and muscled his way into the kitchen to get a Pop-Tart from the cabinets.

"Hey, I like Pop-Tarts too!" Ruby chirped.

Cardin stared at her for a moment. "... Okay," he said dismissively before walking away.

… Ruby wasn't sure what she'd said wrong. She just thought it was neat they both liked Pop-Tarts. :(

"Ignore it, Ruby," Yang told her while Cardin was still in earshot at the edge of the hallway. "There's nothing good to be gained from talking to it."

Cardin paused for just a moment to turn and glare at Yang, who raised a challenging eyebrow back at him.

"You'll pay for that when our teams fight in Rusty's class," he threatened, then walked away.

Yang snorted.

Weiss hopped down from her stool. "I'm going to go get cleaned up and ready to go. Let's try to leave by eleven," she told Yang before heading towards their room.

She seemed upset. Ruby recalled her dad had told her to make friends with Cardin, which definitely seemed… not fun.

"I guess we'll get your dishes then!" Yang called after Weiss.

"Thank you!" she called back.

"I'm sure she'll get it eventually," Blake told Yang dryly.

"Prolly not."

"How did your hunt go yesterday?" Pyrrha asked Team RBY as she started making a sandwich.

"Great!" Ruby chirped. "We killed _two_ Nevermores!"

Halfway to placing a slice of cheese on her bread, Pyrrha paused to look up at them. "What?"

"Yep! At the same time!"

Pyrrha looked at Yang and Blake in disbelief, but Yang grinned cockily back at her and Blake just nodded.

"We didn't believe 'em either," Remus said to her. "But Professor Goodwitch confirmed it."

"Wow. Great job guys," Pyrrha said.

"Thanks!" Ruby accepted. "How 'bout you guys?"

Pyrrha sighed. "Oh, we let Jaune lead the way. I thought it would be good for him to get some exper-"

"We got lost as heck!" Nora yelled at nobody in particular. "Professor Rustyboi had to point us in the right direction four times!"

"Oof," Yang grinned.

"Bet you guys wish you had an Orianna on your team, huh?" Ruby joked, shooting Ori a smile.

"No, she's ours!" Remus immediately piped up.

"An Orianna _would_ have been nice to have," Pyrrha admitted. "How'd you guys do?" she asked Ori.

Orianna shrugged lightly. "We got there easy-peasy. Chose to pick a couple fights with Grimm along the way to show Oobles we don't totally suck in a fight."

"_You_ don't suck, Ori," Remus sighed, sounding like they'd talked about this before. "You're the best swordsman… swordswom-swordsgirl?... I've ever seen!"

"Damn, you really gonna say that with Pyrrha-freaking-Nikos sitting right here?" Yang teased, pointed a forked bit of snausage at Pyrrha.

"Oh," Remus blinked. "I haven't seen her fight. Are you good?"

Even Ruby had to laugh at the innocence of the question.

"She's _the best_," Nora proclaimed proudly.

Pyrrha blushed and focused on her sandwich. "As far as sword skill goes, Weiss is also very good. And Blake looked great fighting Ren."

That made Blake preen a bit. "Thank you," she purred.

"Well _I'm_ the best fist fighter here!" Yang declared, apparently unhappy that she wasn't receiving any of the many compliments being tossed around.

Pyrrha laughed at that. "And I suppose Ruby is the best scythe wielder," she pointed out.

"Heck yeah!" Ruby chirped. "You sheeple need to wake up and see the truth. Scythes are the coolest of weapons."

"Your weapon _is_ pretty cool," Remus agreed.

"Not as cool as Lyre," Orianna mumbled.

"I know," Remus whispered back, patting her hand.

Sacrilege! These heathens dare disporridge the name of Crescent Rose?!

… Wait, no! Disparage.

These heathens dare _disparage_ the name of Crescent Rose?!

"You named your weapon 'Liar'?" Yang asked.

"Like the instrument, not a lying person," Remus replied for Ori while the girl put her head in her hands like she'd heard the question a lot.

That was funny. And she'd probably experience something similar soon. Once they started doing licensed huntress work, Ruby bet they'd be getting a bunch of confused responses to "Team RWBY, led by Ruby" when they were introducing themselves.

Blake stood and began cleaning off her plate, grabbing Weiss' as she passed. "I'm gonna go get cleaned up too," she announced. She looked at Yang. "So you should have your hour to get ready."

"I do _not_ take that long!" Yang protested, giving a classic Yang Arm Flail.

"Yes you do," Ruby and Blake both said at the same time.

Yang glared at them both. "The Yang will remember this," she growled.

"Well thank you for breakfast, 'the Yang'," Blake grinned. She walked back to their room, giving Yang's head a pat as she walked by.

Still playing a dangerous game, touching Yang's hair.

And yet Yang still didn't seem to mind.

The two sisters stuck around chatting with each other and the others for a bit. Ruby gave it about ten minutes, about how long it would take for Weiss to get done doin' the shower stuffs. As she was walking back to the room, Dad also responded to her message.

Popsy Wops: sure hun. sorry. forgot last night. I blame Zwei. where r they?

Ruby gasped. Blaming Zwei for anything other than good stuff was illegal! He was the goodest boi! '_Oh Father, what has happened to you in our absence?'_ Ruby lamented to herself, then saying a silent prayer to the goddess of cookies to save Dad's soul.

The goddess of cookies obviously being Mom.

Me: under my bed n the lockbox. the code is 1031

Her birthday!

She didn't mind giving dad that code, but this was another reminder of how bad she goofed not bringing the blueprints for Crescent Rose with her to Beacon.

Popsy Wops: I'm not gonna find anything i dont want to in there am i?

Me: no dad. I'm not Yang

Popsy Wops: thank the light for that. 2 would be 2 too many

Ruby grinned and headed into their room. Her and Weiss' bathroom door was open, the princess herself standing in front of the sink mirror touching up her blushy cheek makeup. She was wearing a loose, pretty pretty pink blouse with a white tube top underneath it to protect her modesty and fancy long skirt thing that looked flowy and royal.

"Greetings, My Majesty!" Ruby chirped, skipping in.

Weiss gave her a tiny smile in the mirror. "Greetings. How is my favorite loyal subject?"

Ruby's jaw dropped. "I'm your favorite?!"

At that, Weiss blanked out her face and tried to play it off. "Well, you're my _only_ subject, 'cause you're the only one that thinks I'm a princess. So… you're my favorite by default. But you're also my least favorite. By default."

"Uh-huh," Ruby acknowledged, not buying a word of it anymore. She was totally Weiss' favorite!

She walked over to their giant walk in closet and inspected her not-quite-so-empty side, with its rack of fancy Weiss-level clothes on hangers. "What should I wear?" she asked.

"Hmmm…" Weiss hummed thoughtfully. "How 'bout the black top with the roses and the pleated skirt?" she suggested.

Ruby wandered over to look for those things. The top was easy enough-they'd only gotten one black top with roses printed on it.

"This one?" she asked to confirm, holding it in the doorway for Weiss to inspect.

"That does appear to be your black blouse with roses…" she answered coyly.

Ruby ignored the tease, just happy to have pretty clothes to talk about with Weiss now. "And which pleated skirt were you talking about?"

"You only have one pleated skirt, dolt."

"Oh."

Ruby looked at her skirts. Before, she'd had two, and one was her combat skirt. Now, after her and Weiss' shopping trip last weekend, she had six.

And she had no idea what 'pleated' meant.

"Do you need help?" Weiss asked from the doorway, a bemused grin on her face.

"Yes please," Ruby said in a tiny voice.

Weiss gave a breathy chuckle and walked over to Ruby's side, reaching out to pull on one of the two red skirts they'd gotten last week. "This one. See how it has these sections of cloth running down that are folded in on themselves?"

"Yeah."

"Those are pleats."

"Oh. Neat! Learning." Ruby gave her partner a big, grateful smile that Weiss actually returned! Although it was a small, Weiss-sized smile. "What kinda skirt is that?" Ruby asked, pointing down at Weiss' legs.

"A drape skirt."

"Ah. 'Cause it… drapes?"

At that, Weiss gave her another smirk. "Look at you, Ruby. You've practically solved fashion."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered. "What about this one?" She pointed to the other red skirt Weiss had gotten her.

"That's a ruffle skirt." Ruby opened her mouth, but Weiss cut her off, continuing, "Yes, because it's ruffled."

Ruby closed her mouth, at which Weiss let out one of her tiny wind chime giggles.

"Get dressed, dolt," she said gently, patting Ruby's arm and turning to walk back to the mirror.

"Should I wear an undershirt?" Ruby asked before Weiss could leave.

Weiss paused, placing a hand on the doorframe as she looked back at Ruby. "You could. Maybe just a tank top, so you can show off those shoulders. Either a red if you have a tank top that matches the skirt, or a white one if you don't, which I don't think you do. But if you wear a white one then you have to wear white socks or shoes."

… Alright, there were a lot of rules to this, and Ruby didn't really understand any of them. Kinda the norm when it came to rules though. "Ummm… I don't have white shoes…" she said. At least, she was pretty sure she didn't. They'd bought a lot of stuff last week though. But none of the shoes were white, she was pretty sure.

"No," Weiss agreed, apparently having memorized Ruby's wardrobe already. "But you have white socks, don't you? The over the calf ones? Pretty sure they're in the second drawer." She pointed to emphasize.

"Oh yeah!" Ruby remembered. She opened the drawer and triumphantly pulled out the pair of socks Weiss had somehow had mapped in her head.

"There you go," Weiss grinned, then headed back to the mirror, beginning to put on some earrings.

Ruby nodded and got to work. She had no idea what all Weiss was considering with these fashion decrees or why they were right, but she knew they were. 'Cause of course they were! They were from Weiss.

Right before she started getting undressed, she paused, realizing the closet door was still open. Should she close it? No, that would be awkward, right? 'Cause Weiss left it open, so clearly, she didn't mind… Or maybe she just expected Ruby to close it because Ruby was the one getting dressed.

Ugh. Ruby had no idea what the Normal Knees answer was here.

She ended up leaving it open and just trying to get undressed and redressed as quickly as possible. It didn't matter too much, though, as Weiss didn't turn to her until a bit after she'd gotten everything on and was tying her shoes.

"What did you do to your hair?" Weiss asked, standing primly in the doorway with her hands clasped together.

"Uh… I may have blown it up trying to get dressed really quick," Ruby confessed, reaching up to try to pat down whatever had gone wrong.

"There's no rush, silly," Weiss said gently, walking over to brush her fingers through Ruby's hair to fix the troublesome strands she saw. Ruby's heartbeat felt a little arhythmic at the gesture, though Ruby had no idea why and Weiss didn't seem to notice as she finished saying, "We have plenty of time. Would you like to borrow some jewelry?" she asked, indicating her box of fancy rich people jewelry on top of her cabinety thing.

"Oh, uh…" Ruby blanched. Being responsible for expensive stuff like that seemed… spooky. Besides, Ruby wasn't sure Weiss' pristine jewelry should be used on Ruby's grubbyness.

Weiss didn't wait for an answer though, instead walking over to her jewelry box and thinking aloud. "I don't have any red rose earrings, which is a shame, because they'd compliment that outfit perfectly. I have some white rose ones though! Or, I guess, white flower ones. They're not really roses. But they're cute! And would sorta work since you've got some white accents in your look now." She rifled through the contents of the box as she talked, pulling out two small, simple white flower earrings and holding them out to Ruby.

"Uh huh," Ruby replied, robotically accepting the offering.

"We should look for some red flower earrings for you while were out. It would just make sense for you to have them. Roses are your thing."

Ruby blinked. "This doesn't seem like too much?" she asked.

"Too much what?" Weiss worried, suddenly looking very alarmed.

Ruby shrugged. "I dunno... I feel like you're making me very... pretty... and I don't think I look right to pull it off?"

Weiss looked at her blankly for a moment, then, without a word, grabbed her hand and dragged her to stand in front of the big floor to ceiling mirror Weiss had on her side of the closet.

"Ack! What?!" Ruby squeaked.

Weiss pointed angrily at the mirror. "_Look_," she demanded.

Ruby looked.

She saw a very very pretty, somewhat grumpy Weiss and a Ruby wearing color-shifted Weiss clothes and looking very weird in them.

"See?" Weiss said like she'd just won the argument. "You _are_ pretty. If the clothes make you uncomfortable, that's a different story, and I'm sorry, we can get stuff more like the clothes you like. But don't ever say you don't think you're pretty again… 'cause that's stupid."

Ruby wasn't sure what to say. She wanted disagree and say she looked goofy as heck right now, but to do so would be saying Weiss was wrong about fashion and prettiness, which… was wrong.

They both looked at the Ruby in the mirror for a long moment.

Then Weiss frowned. "Sorry, that was… I'm not great at this. I just meant to say… you _are_ very pretty, Ruby, and maybe you're just not used to seeing yourself like this. But I think you look great! And if you give yourself a bit of time to get used to it, you might too. Like the button down outfit! You liked how you looked in that once you got used to it, right?"

Her reflection in the mirror showed Ruby a worried, hopeful expression. Was Weiss afraid that Ruby decided she didn't like the clothes they'd gotten together?

That's no good!

"Of course!" Ruby agreed, giving Weiss a beaming smile. "You're right. Sorry. Guess I'm not used to seeing myself look… I guess I'm just used to being a little tomboyish."

The relieved smile Weiss put on told Ruby should done well. "Yes. Well, you look cute as a tomboy too," she said, patting Ruby's shoulder. "You don't have to just be one thing."

"What about you?" Ruby asked, an idea forming in her head that made her grin uncontrollably.

"What about me what?" Weiss asked, taking a half step back at the look on Ruby's face.

"How do you look as a tomboy?" Ruby clarified.

Weiss went pale, an impressive feat for her. "Oh, uh… no."

"No? What do you mean 'no'?!" Ruby squeaked.

Weiss shook her head vehemently, her earrings and ponytail swishing side to side.

"Have you tried?" Ruby asked.

"No, and I don't need to," Weiss declared in a tone of voice that seemed to be her trying to end the discussion.

"C'mon, Weiss! All this talk of how I can have more than one style and you haven't even tried others?"

"I have too!" Weiss shot back indignantly. She started counting off on her fingers. "I have the… casual fancy look that you call 'princess', I have, like, _actual_ princess where I where dresses and do up my hair and stuff for formal occasions, and I have business formal with my dress shirts and pants and stuff!" She held up her three fingers in Ruby's face. "See?! Plenty of styles."

That might have been the most Ruby had ever heard Weiss say 'and stuff', like, ever. She seemed pretty flabbergasted.

Ruby blinked at Weiss' fingers, unimpressed. "Uh-huh. And I had tomboy, casual tomboy, fancier tomboy, and pajamas."

"Ruby Rose!" Weiss squealed in protest, making Ruby laugh.

"Tell you what, Weiss," Ruby offered. "Last Saturday we went out and picked a bunch of clothes that you said looked good on me. How 'bout today we get _you _some stuff that _I _think looks good on you?"

Weiss' eyes went wide with horror, then started scanning side to side. She was trying to think of a way out of this.

"... That sounds ridiculous!" she declared.

"Why?" Ruby challenged. "It sounds totally fair!"

"Because… you're a dolt! You don't know anything about fashion!"

"Didn't you _just_ say I look cute as a tomboy? I must know _something_ to do that, right?"

Weiss frowned at herself in the mirror. "Crap, I did say that, didn't I?"

Ruby grinned maniacally, the argument now 100% in the bag. This had worked before too. Ruby might have not be able to argue against Weiss, but neither could Weiss!

You know, sometimes Ruby could be truly brilliant.

There was silence for another long moment.

"So?" Ruby prompted.

"Hold on! I'm trying to think of another excuse," Weiss muttered back at her.

Ruby had to giggle at that.

"Oh shut up," Weiss grumbled. She sighed heavily. "Fine."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered, throwing her arms up.

"Ssshhh!" hissed Weiss, flinching away from her. "I'm _literally_ right next to you!"

"Which means you get to hear the full power of my excitement!" Ruby beamed back at her, making Weiss roll her eyes.

"Full power of your idiocy," she complained quietly.

"That too," Ruby agreed, taking a page out of Yang's book.

Weiss half rolled her eyes and stomped out haughtily, telling Ruby without turning around, "Just put those on and get out here."

Ruby bounced up and down a bit in anticipation of her new mission for the day before she could settle enough to get the earrings on. They were, like everything Weiss owned or even touched, very pretty, and Ruby _did_ like the way they looked on her…

Maybe Ruby _could_ get used to looking like this sometimes. And if she could do it, then Weiss could definitely get used to looking like a normal, mortal, non-angel princess sometimes!

Hopefully.

Ruby should recruit Yang for help picking clothes for Weiss! Although… maybe Weiss shouldn't know the ideas are coming from Yang, 'cause then she'd just default reject them.

It took her a lil bit to get the earrings one because, well, she didn't usually put earrings on. She poked herself in the earlobe a couple of times before she could find her piercing, but aura is neat so it didn't hurt.

When she meandered back out of the bathroom to find Weiss on her laptop at her desk and Blake sitting in the back corner of her bed with her pile of pillows stacked against the wall, book on her lap. She had on a simple but nice looking black blouse and a pair of white jeans. Apparently Blake was just allergic to colors or something. And Yang was…

"Yang in the bathroom?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Mm-hmm."

Ruby flopped down in her chair. "Well, guess we have time to finish our papers for Ooble's class," she sighed. "Or just write them from scratch."

Not that she'd do that right now. She checked her scroll. Yay! Dad had sent pics of the blueprints! And actually gotten good quality photos so she could read the measurements! Woot!

She sent a quick, joking thank you back.

Me: Thx Zwei! 3

She flipped to a clean sheet of paper and started sketching out a copy of the main blueprint. If Weiss was really following through with her offer of getting Ruby the best steel ever-which of course she would, 'cause she was Weiss-then Ruby would have to figure out how the thinner blade would effect things. But first she needed to get down what she had at the moment.

… How would she have the ports activate? There wouldn't be a silver trigger and wire to send her aura through like there was for the rounds from her magazines… would there? Maybe she _should_ put in another trigger? Somehow?

Wait, how was that supposed to work? Would… crap. Ruby had no idea how that was supposed to work.

"Hey, Weiss?"

She glanced over to see the corner of Weiss' lips twitch. "Yes, Ruby?" she replied, still looking at whatever smart person newsy article she was scrolling through.

"If I wanted to put Dust ports in Crescent Rose to add elemental attacks to the blade, how would I do that?"

That got Weiss' attention, and she looked away from her screen to inspect what Ruby was doing. "Hm," she stated simply to announce that she was thinking over things. Squinting, she leaned over to look at the pic Dad had sent.

"It's so tiny," she commented. "Send that to me so I can pull it up on here." She tapped her laptop screen with a fingernail.

"Okay!" Ruby agreed excitedly. If Weiss wanted a closer look, that meant she was actually interested! Woohoo! Weiss superbrain help!

A couple of scroll taps and keyboard clicks later and the blueprints were pulled up on Weiss' laptop. She was right, of course; it was way easier to see like this.

"I'm… not really all that familiar with what I'm looking at, sorry," Weiss confessed. "So your magazines go here…" She pointed at the part in the diagram where the white arrow on the diagram was drawn from a magazine to the mag well.

"Mhm!" Ruby affirmed.

"But don't you have to have silver wire running to it to focus your aura at the Dust?..."

"It's there," Ruby pointed, indicating the grey trigger and the grey line flowing from it to the chamber. "I send my aura through the trigger and into the hammer so it'll trigger the round when it hits."

"Ah. Right." Weiss nodded slowly. "And you want the Dust powers to be here in the blade well?"

"Yep! Although I'm not sure how to trigger it. And… especially 'cause I kinda wanted to have a sustained Dust blade, but I can't think of a way to do that when crystals are consumed in one go."

"You can use pressurized flow dispensers instead of standard crystal cases," Weiss murmured slowly, looking over the diagram while speaking.

"Uh… what's that?"

"... Mh-hmm."

Ruby blinked. "Uh, Weiss?"

Weiss startled a bit, pulling back from the screen she'd been leaning closer and closer to. "Hm? What?"

Okay, focused Weiss was adorable.

"What's a pressure… flowy… what's-it?"

"Oh! It's, hmm… It's what most mechanical Dust devices use, like engines and city power cores and things like that. The… hm. Grab my sword?" She twisted around to point at Myrtenaster's fancy awesome case that was resting against the bookshelf next to their bunk.

"Sure!"

Ruby rose-sprinted over and grabbed it, bringing it back and kneeling dramatically next to Weiss' seat and offering it up to her.

"Your sword, your majesty!"

"Stop doing that, you dolt," Weiss sighed, but she was smiling to herself as she unclasped the case, so Ruby took that as a definitely-not-serious request.

Weiss didn't get her sword out like Ruby had been expecting, though. She just pulled out one of the cannisters of Dust she kept there, then closed and locked the case.

"Put that back and come over here, you goof."

Ruby quickly rosed around, slowing for a moment to gently and carefully place Myrtenaster's case back down, then rushing back to her seat and bouncing eagerly in anticipation of her Weiss Lesson. Weiss took a moment to watch some of the rose petals falling around her, wide-eyed in the way she had like she belonged in a vignetted sunset painting, then turned back to Ruby.

"So this is a standard Dust cylinder for huntress weapons, right?" She held it up, pinching it between two dainty fingers.

"Looks like a really high end one, but yeah," Ruby agreed.

Weiss glanced down and considered that for a moment. "... Fair. But the design is the standard for small scale implementations like in our weapons."

"Right."

She tapped the one end. "Typically there's a silver plate here, but the way Myrtenaster's designed that's actually in the hilt, right before the cylinder. We design things so that our aura flows here, triggers the Dust inside, and the magic flows out here." She turned the top towards Ruby, indicating the opening.

"Uh-huh. And the whole cannister gets activated all at once, which is what I want to avoid. I think."

Weiss nodded. "Yes. I mean, _technically_ you can force the bursts of magic out separately, like how I double water slashed you in our spar last week, but it takes a lot of training and concentration and wouldn't work for what you want. _But_…" She trailed off to type a search into her laptop and pull up a diagram of what looked like an engine. "So this is a carrr… engine… yeah, car engine. So it looks a little different from what you'd want to use because it's big enough to use full pistons and it uses a primed yellow crystal to activate it instead of aura, because… you know, it's a car."

"Right. And how is it different from that one?" Ruby asked, pointing at the cylinder Weiss had placed on her desk.

"Why, I'm glad you asked, young student," Weiss grinned at her. Ruby beamed back, happy that Weiss seemed to be enjoying this teacher moment so much. "So look at how these silver wires-er, well they're lines of silicon because that works a bit better at carrying yellow Dust electricity a little bit better for some reason, but just imagine for your weapon that they're silver."

Ruby squinted and leaned forward to look at what Weiss was talking about. Although she got a lil' bit distracted by…

"You smell nice," she said quietly.

Weiss blinked wide. "Oh, thank you… You do too, as always. Like roses, for some inexplicable reason." She offered a small, joking smile that Ruby answered with a giggle before focusing back at the task at hand.

It was hard to tell exactly what was going on, mostly because it looked like there were four separate Dust cylinders on this engine, and… it was kinda confusing which way they were going.

"Ummmm… which way does the Dust flow out?" she had to ask.

"Ah, yes. That could be a little confusing. It's flowing _in_, actually. The input into the cylinders is on the outside here and the Dust's magic flows into this… big… engine… block… thing, whatever it's called. Then that gets pushed to the… stuff that turns the wheels."

"'Whatever it's called'?" Ruby teased. "Aren't you supposed to know that?"

Weiss huffed impatiently. "I study _Dust_, not Dust mechanics. I haven't gone in depth on the engineering side of stuff because I don't need to. It's not relevant to how _I _use Dust to fight."

"So… you're a Dust wizard, not a Dust engineer?" Ruby grinned.

Weiss blinked at her a couple times. "Yes, that sums it up rather well."

"Teehee."

Weiss half-rolled her eyes. "_Anyway_, the system flows this way."

"Mkay." Ruby leaned in again to inspect. "... It… has… _two_ lines of silver going to the cannister thingy?"

"Exactly!" Weiss got a bit animated, her delicate hands fidgeting around as she tried to figure out how she was going to explain. "It's-there's a pressure plate here… Actually, let me show you on this." She picked up the cylinder from earlier. "So…imagine, if you will, that here on the aura input end, there's a piston here, right?"

She looked at Ruby, apparently wanting some response before she continued.

"Right," Ruby said.

"Right. So when your aura hits the silver plating, instead of triggering the Dust, it pushes the piston up. Or down. Whatever. Towards this side." She tapped the opening end. "What that does is push the Dust in the cylinder towards the aperture. Then there's _another_ line of silver running over here-" she tapped the opening again "-and _that's _the aura that triggers the Dust. The effect of this is your aura is only making contact with and triggering a little bit of Dust at a time, so you get a sustained stream of magic out of it as more is pushed out."

"Neat!" Ruby bounced. "So you could make, like, a flamethrower? Gasp! _You_ could make a _frost_thrower!"

The corner of Weiss' lips twitched. "I could, yes."

"Why don't you use this kinda Dust cylinder instead?" Ruby asked. Weiss could definitely afford it.

Weiss gave one of her head tilt shrugs. "There are downsides. For instance, there's not a way to control the speed the piston pushes at, so you can't get a burst of magic if you need it. That's why car engines like this one have multiple cylinders. As you need to go faster, it needs to feed in more Dust, and it does so by activating more cylinders. Some newer engines have more complicated feed systems that have differently sized cylinders to smooth acceleration, but older models don't and that's why old cars feel really jerky with their speeding up."

"Ah."

"Yeah. And I'd rather just have strong bursts of magic. There's also the issue of space economy. Like, because of the need for the piston and the second line of silver, you need more space in order to have an equal amount of Dust to a standard cylinder, and Myrtenaster can't really support that. _And_ reloading pressurized flow cannisters would take a lot more time because the way they're designed, there needs to be a clip mechanic at the aperture end to connect to the second silver wire."

"Hm…" Ruby said thoughtfully. "So… if I used flowy cannisters, I could have a flame blade but I could flame slash?" she asked.

Weiss subdued an amused smirk. "What… exactly do you mean by 'flame slash'?"

"Like, I swing Crescent Rose and then a big wooshy line of fire flies out from it like… woosh." Ruby mimed what she meant.

Weiss' eyes twinkled as she nodded in understanding. "Ah, I see. Woosh. Well you're correct, a pressurized flow system wouldn't be able to create a big enough burst of magic for something like that."

"Poo," Ruby pouted, deflating and slumping down.

Weiss shook her head. "You could always put in both. It looks like you have more than enough space in this blade well. It would just be an issue of making sure your lines of silver for the two systems don't run too close together so you can't accidentally trigger both. You'd probably need lead lining separating them. It would add a bit of weight, but if you're getting thinner, lighter steel for the blade then it might balance out overall."

Ruby's excitement built right back up at that. "Really?! Do… would you help me figure that out?"

Weiss give her a big, real, Ruby-sized smile. "Of course! This is… very enjoyable." Her hands got fidgety again.

"Woohoo!"

"I wasn't really part of the technical aspects of Myrtenaster's design, but this is making me wish I was. A project like this-a _puzzle_ like this-seems very… engaging to try to solve."

'Enjoyable'. 'Engaging'. It was like Weiss was making a conscious effort not to use the word 'fun'. But it seemed like that's what she meant, and if she was going to have fun designing upgrades for Crescent Rose then this was a total win-win!

"One issue you might have though is being able to… flame slash-" she rolled her eyes a lil' bit as she said the words "-and lightning slash and wind slash, like I remember you saying you wanted to do before."

"Why would that be an issue?" Ruby worried.

Weiss frowned thoughtfully. "Well… different Dusts need different diameters of apertures to flow through… Oh, but you don't need it to travel down a barrel, it can just dump onto the blade. Okay, that won't be an issue. Although you'd still face the difficulty of reloading. I imagine you'd need several ports running down the blade for the whole thing to be covered-"

"Yeah, I was thinking two ports on each of these two blade sections and one on the smaller end section," Ruby said, pointing.

Weiss nodded. "Right. So that would mean reloading would take a really long time, so if you want to have the versatility of having different elements available at once, you'd… um… I supposed you'd need to set up synchronized cyclers on each of the ports."

"Like a bunch of little Myrtenasters in the blade well?" Ruby cooed.

That made Weiss grin. "Yes, though there's not quite enough space here for us to pull off… I mean, I guess it depends on what size cylinders we end up using, which… I can't really predict. We'd just have to test a bunch of options . I suspect we'll only be able to have up to two slots in the cycler, but I'm just guessing at that, honestly."

Ruby _really_ liked how Weiss was talking about 'we' and 'us' now, like she really was thinking of it as her project too.

"Does that mean I should build a new Crescent Rose instead of sticking upgrades on her now?" Ruby asked. It seemed like too many things about the infrastructure of the weapon would need to change for her to be able to just slap this system on.

Weiss nodded absently, lost in looking at the diagrams again. "Maybe just the blade well," she mumbled. "I don't think the… handle staff part would need too many changes. Depends on where the silver plating to feed to the ports would go and how it would work."

"It's called a snath," Ruby said matter-of-factly, happy to have a fact to give Weiss in exchange for all the edjamucation Weiss was giving her.

"I'm not sure," Weiss murmured.

"Huh?"

"Mm-hmm."

Ruby held back a giggle. "Weiss?"

Again, Weiss startled a bit and blinked, eyes darting around before meeting Ruby's. "Huh? What?"

Ruby grinned. "I was just saying the 'handle staff part' of a scythe is called the snath."

"Ah," Weiss nodded. "Good to know, thank you. I felt ridiculous saying 'handle staff part' out loud."

Ruby had thought it was cute, so she shrugged the worry away. "It's not wrong though."

"True, b-"

Yang and Blake's bathroom door flew open, and Yang jumped out into the room and spread her arms out wide. "Dun duh-duuuuuuh!" she trumpeted, heralding her own entrance.

"Why on Remnant did it take you half an hour to put on shorts and a t-shirt?" Blake teased, pushing herself from her corner.

"Listen here, Belladoofus," Yang declared. "I will chew you up and spit you out like… uh… something that you chew up and spit out."

"... Tobacco?" Blake offered.

"Ew, no."

"Is that really what you're wearing?" Weiss griped.

Yang was just wearing a white t-shirt with one of her boy band album covers printed on it and a pair of denim short shorts. Ruby didn't think it was terrible or anything, but Yang definitely did look less fancy than everyone else.

"Hey man, I don't want to wear a bunch of fancy layers or buttons or crap when I'm gonna have to take stuff on and off a bunch in changing rooms!"

Weiss rolled her eyes and stood. "I'd be surprised if you even _have_ something with buttons."

Yang opened her mouth to respond, but Blake cut her off.

"Yang, at least wear a nice blouse. Like that orange one with the tassels on the hem! That one's cute."

Yang regarded Blake for a moment, then sighed and conceded. "Fiiiine." She shot a glare at Weiss before she headed back into the bathroom. Thankfully, it only took her about twenty seconds to come back out. The blouse Blake had mentioned was definitely a cute one, orange with dangly tassels at the bottom and along the back and at the shoulders. The neckline was also cut pretty low, letting Yang adequately show off her super weapons.

Blake seemed to really like the look, and when Yang noticed, she gave the girl a wink. Blake turned pink and jumped to her feet.

"You guys ready to go?"

"Yeet!" Yang agreed at the same time Ruby bounced out of her chair with an excited squeak.

Weiss being Weiss, she summoned another rich people car for them to ride in, which was totally fine with Ruby because that meant she got to mess with all the buttons again, and Weiss seemed resigned to let her. This trip, Ruby got to sit next to Weiss and across from Yang, who she made sure to poke with her toes to be annoying whenever it looked like Yang wouldn't catch her.

As she was making the little TV screen move up and down, something Weiss had said earlier caught up with her.

"Hey, Weiss?"

"Yes, Ruby?"

"What did you mean when you said I should show off my shoulders?"

Weiss tilted her head, confused. "Just… what I said. You have nice shoulders. You should, you know, play them up, display them, whatever."

Ruby looked down at her shoulders. They just looked like normal shoulders… "What's nice about 'em?"

Weiss frowned and looked at Ruby's shoulders too. "Um… I don't know? They're a good shoulder... shape?"

"What's a good shoulder shape?" Blake asked.

At that, Weiss shrugged. "Ruby's? Yours too, I suppose."

"Yours are nice too!" Ruby chirped.

Weiss inspected her own shoulders. "... They are, aren't they," she remarked.

"Ahem!" Yang cut in, crossing her arms grumpily.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yours are all big and blocky!"

Yang scoffed. "Yeah, because they're good, strong, _useful_ shoulders! With muscles in 'em!"

"But they're not pretty!" Weiss said with a pout, though the pout conveyed guilt more than sadness or grumpiness.

"Pbbt!" Yang raspberried. "Haven't you ever heard 'form follows function', Weiss?"

Weiss blinked a couple times. "I… have. But where have _you_ heard that?"

"Oh… umm… I think it was Comm Skills? The teacher was talking about, you know, not putting a thousand special effects on our SlateSlides presentations."

"But those are the best part!" Ruby frowned.

"That… sounds more like an eighty-twenty rule issue. Or Ockam's Razor."

"Oh! She mentioned that too!" Yang nodded. "I don't remember what it means, though. I just thought it sounded like a cool name for a video game."

"Ooooh, yeah!" Ruby agreed. "Kinda like Mirror's Edge, but instead of a mirror… it's an ockam… What's an ockam?"

"Weren't we just talking about shoulders?" Blake grinned.

"_Fishing_ for more compliments over there, Blake?" Yang said with a devilish smile, putting on emphasis on 'fishing' that Ruby didn't quite understand.

Blake seemed to, though, because her eyes went wide and she gave Yang a look that Ruby couldn't really describe. "I… I _will_… I'll…"

"You'll what?" Yang teased.

"I dunno, tie your shoelaces together or something," Blake huffed, turning away and making Yang laugh.

"Shush!" Weiss shot to Yang. "I'm on the scroll."

Ruby hadn't noticed Weiss pull out her scroll and was wondering who she was calling, but she had to stay quiet because that's what you're supposed to do when someone's on a call.

"Hello, Mister Wafer?" Weiss said after a moment.

'_Oooooh,' _Ruby realized.

"Yes sir, it's Weiss, the, uh, strawberry shortbread cookie girl?" Weiss turned a little pink in the face at the words, and Ruby and Yang both stifled snickers. "Yes, would you be able to make a dozen of those for us? We'll be stopping by later today after some shopping."

"Baker's dozen!" Ruby whispered.

"Yes, tha-oh, what?" Weiss turned to Ruby, looking a little flustered now at having two people talking to her.

"M-make it a baker's dozen," Ruby repeated, now worried about the interruption and Weiss getting mad at her for it.

"Oh, right," Weiss agreed easily. "Could you make that a baker's dozen, sir?"

'_Phew.'_

"Fantastic, thank you, sir. Yes, we look forward to it too. And we'll probably be getting some more things when we stop by too. We'll see you then, thank you." Weiss snapped her scroll shut and gave Ruby a little smile.

"Our cookies are… cooking," she announced.

The way she said that made Ruby laugh. "Awesome! Wait, cookies… seems like a weird name for them, doesn't it?" she pointed out. "Like… shouldn't they be 'bakies' or something?"

"Did you just custom order cookies?" Yang asked, ignoring Ruby's perfectly good question.

"Ruby likes them!" Weiss shot back, huffing and crossing her arms to gaze out the window.

"It's true!" Ruby came to her rescue. "They are probably the best cookies. Not that I'd ever want to have to choose amongst cookies."

"Unless it's to hate on oatmeal raisins," Yang amended.

"Yeah, those are lame."

"What is this place we're going to again?" Blake asked.

Ruby stayed quiet, expecting Weiss to answer, but it appeared Weiss had zoned out again looking out the window at the city. She tended to do that. Once they got onto Beacon Bridge, she left the conversation, and tended to stay that way even when they got into the city unless someone nagged her.

That someone tended to be Ruby.

But no need to disturb her now! "It's called Cerise Moron's," Ruby answered. She knew that was wrong, but it was funny! Also, it was a test. Weiss didn't correct her, so she must be well and truly checked out. No way she wouldn't scold and correct Ruby if she was listening. "It's very pish posh," she added.

"A Zwei kinda establishment?" Yang joked.

Ruby nodded solemnly. "Yes, it's very Zwei. Like, if animals had spirit animals, Zwei's would probably be Cerise Moron."

"Wouldn't an animal's spirit animal just be… them?" Blake asked.

Yang pretending to look offended. "Wow, Blake. That's _so_ racist."

"I-what?"

Yang snickered. "Honestly, some people," she lamented dramatically.

"Are you ever _not_ trolling everyone around you?" Blake sighed.

"Nope. Never."

"She do be like that s-all the time," Ruby told Blake.

"Well, if she's my punishment for what I've done, I guess it could have been worse," Blake said, giving Yang a little side glance from under her eyelashes.

What… what did that mean? What did Blake need punishing for?

Ruby was about to ask, but in her confused pause Yang got a word in first.

"Heck yeah it could be worse! You could have to bunk with short, pale, and AFK over there," she quipped.

They all turned to look at Weiss, who was now craning her neck around to try to look up at the tops of the skyscrapers that were flanking them. .

"... She's really out of it, huh," Blake remarked.

"Whatchu daydreaming about, Weiss?" Ruby asked. "... Weiss?"

"Hm? What?" Weiss snapped back to reality and blinked at Ruby.

So cute!

"Whatchu daydreaming about over there?" repeated Ruby.

That got her a frown. "I'm not daydreaming! Daydreaming is for children. I'm just… thinking."

"Uh-huh," Yang said, crossing her arms and looking altogether unimpressed.

"Well what are you thinking about?" Ruby asked.

"Oh, not much," Weiss dodged.

Ruby gave her a grumpy face.

"Just… life and what we've accomplished as a race and what I can do to take us further and… stuff," Weiss explained.

"Ah, yeah, the classic 'not much'," Blake grinned.

"Mmhmm," Weiss nodded absently, missing the sarcasm as she turned to gaze out the window again.

The rest of them looked at each other for a second before they cracked up.

"You're a pretty weird dudette, Weiss," Yang laughed.

Though she hadn't reacted to their laughter all that much, she apparently heard Yang's joke, because she responded, not turning away from the window, with a dismissive, "Something, something, your face."

That made them all laugh again, and Yang conceded. "Damn, you got me."

'_This is nice,'_ Ruby thought to herself. Nice, relaxing break day after an awesome Hunt, laughing with her sister-friends-teammates. About to do some shopping! With a Weiss-sized budget! This easily went into her Top 1000 Saturdays list.

Wait, had Ruby even had a thousand Saturdays yet?

Hm…

This would take a lot of fingers to count.

* * *

**Heyo! Sorry for the late update. Been getting distracted by a bunch of awesome stuff recently, like The Witcher and The Mandolorian and Total War: Three Kingdoms and stuff. **

**Hope you like the wind down from the action of the previous chapters. Just Team RWBY chillin' on their Saturday.**

**Let me know what you think! : )**


	36. Hunting 3-8

"Now before we go in there…" Weiss started, coming to a halt in front of Cerise Moran's. She fiddled with the clasp of her clutch that held her scroll and wallet, then leveled a _look_ at Yang. "You have to promise to _behave_."

"Yeah, Ruby," Yang agreed, not noticing Weiss' pointed stare.

Blake cleared her throat and leaned a bit towards her partner. "I think she's talking to _you_," she whispered.

"I-hwaaa?"

"Ruby was very well-behaved when we were here," Weiss stated with a prim nod. "A little loud, but very good by Ruby standards."

"Thanks!" Ruby grinned, apparently not bothered at all about what Weiss was implying. "It was probably the lady stilts."

"I-_I _don't have any trouble behaving!" Yang declared indignantly. "I'm basically an adult! And I'm older than _all_ of you, so… yeah!"

"All three of us are seventeen, Yang," Blake informed her, pointing between herself, Yang, and Weiss.

"Yeah, but when's your birthday?"

"April."

"Crap. Weiss?"

"December."

"_Damn it!_" Yang huffed and swung her fists around her hips. Like a 'goomba', Ruby would probably say. "Well I'm still the tallest!"

"Just be the most behaved, please," Weiss sighed. She considered addressing Blake, too, but… no need. Blake was refined.

She lead the group in, Yang still blustering about. She went quiet when she got inside though, stunned into silence.

Looking around the store, Blake let out a low whistle.

The store was the same elegant display of high end clothing as it had been before. Today there was a scent of lemon and wood varnish hanging in the air, an aroma that matched the yellow-orange lighting and dark wood furniture quite well.

There were a few other people in here today, a man and woman couple in business casual attire that were looking at ties and suit jackets, two women in matching blue-green sundresses that looked like they might be sisters, and a lone girl with green hair in a tight fitting, skimpy outfit that Weiss had to concede did a decent job of showing off her toned midriff.

Thankfully, the condescending woman that had looked down at Ruby wasn't here today. Instead, there was a man in his late twenties or early thirties, a crisp suit on his slim frame.

Blake let out a low whistle as they all took in the store together. Like last time, Ruby was bouncing up and down excitedly, clearly eager to look around.

"Right, behave," Yang said with a nod, apparently realizing what kind of place this was and what Weiss had meant.

"Yang, Blake, where would you two like to start?" Weiss asked.

"Oh, are we shopping for me too?" Blake asked, blinking rapidly.

"Of course! This is for everyone. Ruby, you're welcome to get some more stuff here too, but it doesn't look like they've gotten anything new since last week…"

"Maybe my shirt's in, though!" Ruby chirped.

Weiss shook her head. "They would have texted me. Want to look at some more heels, though?" she teased.

Ruby shook her head violently. "Nope! I'm gonna find stuff for _you_ to get!" She skipped towards one of the accessory tables, then switched to a goofy power walk before Weiss got a chance to yell at her.

'_Good luck finding punky tomboy styles here,'_ Weiss grinned to herself.

Yang scanned the walls, then beelined towards the casual women's section with a visible selection of crop tops.

"I should have seen this coming," Weiss muttered to herself.

"Probably," Blake agreed with a smile, stepping up to Weiss' side.

"Where do _you_ want to start?" Weiss asked her.

With a frown, Blake shrugged. "What's Ruby trying to find for you?"

"Stuff in _her_ style," Weiss sighed.

"Ah, well… She can have fun with that. Those dresses look nice though." Blake pointed to the far end of the store where the corner was a display of dresses on mannequins that would look at home in a Red Carpet Gala and put any other room to shame.

Weiss loved them.

She nodded her head towards them and started walking, glancing back to make sure Blake followed. She did, though hesitantly.

There were five different styles of dresses on display, each with varying skirt lengths, sleeves and/or shoulders, trims and waistlines. Different colors, too, though they all had the color cards this store used showing other options.

Blake seemed to take a liking to the most scandalous little slip on. It was a pale orange, silken thing with a yellow floral patten of lace down the sides that would give a see-through view of skin and a low cut across the chest. A loop of cloth connected the two strips that covered the breasts by running around the neck. There was almost no back.

It was racey.

Blake had the figure for it, though, and with her look and the way she held herself she'd probably look confident and classy more than slutty.

Should Weiss say something? Ask Blake if she liked it? Maybe what colors she'd like to try on? This was probably a point where a conversation was supposed to start, but Weiss and Blake were both quiet people, so it just… didn't.

After walking a circle around the one mannequin, Blake glanced at another.

"D-did you want to try it on?" Weiss asked. It felt like she needed to say something, and Blake had spent long enough inspecting the dress that Weiss was fairly sure she liked it. Kind of hard to tell though. Blake's expression didn't betray anything other than curiosity, and she looked at the next dress with the same keen eye.

And Weiss wasn't great with people.

"A little bit," Blake answered. "It seems a little…"

"Racey?" Weiss suggested.

Blake gave a small smile. "Yes. Though I think Yang might like it a lot."

"I'm not sure it's the right kind of cut for her."

That made Blake raise an eyebrow at her. "I meant Yang might like it a lot on _me_."

Weiss went pink in the face. "Oh."

Blake grinned a bit wider.

"Well, I'm sure a lot of people would," Weiss said with a light cough to fill the awkward silence. Any idiot with eyeballs would be able to see Blake is attractive, even without considering the dress.

Yang was right about one thing: Team RWBY was a bunch of babes.

"I'm flattered you think so," Blake grinned at her.

Weiss cleared her throat. "There's a purple one with black lace," she commented, pointing at the color card. The style name was apparently 'Nightspice', the color purple-black color combo labelled 'Regal Star'. Kinda pretentious sounding but whatever. "Seems like your colors."

"It does, doesn't it." Blake murmured, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "But… Weiss, I don't know how I feel about you buying me things." She flicked her eyes sideways to meet Weiss'.

Ah. '_That's what all the hesitation's been about.'_

"I know all the stuff you said to Yang," she continued softly, "to get her to let you pamper Ruby."

"I'm not _pam_-"

"I get why you want to. I understand. I'd probably be happy with it, but… things are different. For me."

"Why?" Weiss asked, feeling a little bit angry but much more confused, to the point she wasn't sure she was supposed be angry at all. She didn't understand what Blake was saying.

"Your money is…" Blake broke eye contact with her as she trailed off.

"Bad?" Weiss finished, getting a little heated.

Blake sighed and went back to inspecting the skimpy dress. "No. Money isn't good or bad. It's not anything. We literally made it up. But what people do for it? That can be bad, and… your family has gotten a lot through some pretty not good ways."

That pissed Weiss off a little bit. Like the Schnees were some sort of villain. Like _Weiss_ was some sort of villain. Because apparently being successful was a crime?

She was about to retort something but Blake raised a hand to cut her off.

"Don't! Don't get mad. I didn't… I'm sorry. I know that _you_ haven't done anything, and you probably don't even agree with me about what's bad. I just… I'll show you what I mean… someday. Give you a different perspective. Maybe you'll see what I see. I… Sorry. I'm being stupid. I'll shut up and try on some clothes."

Weiss' head was spinning. What just happened? Blake had just rubberbanded in three different directions there.

Was Weiss supposed to be mad about the insinuations about her family, or concerned about whatever getting 'a different perspective' meant, or apologizing for making Blake feel sorry about… nothing?

"Um… so you think purple and black?" Blake asked, trying to push the conversation back to a better tone. "What about the black and white? That's even more me."

It took Weiss a second to shift gears back to clothes. "Ah. Um. But the color would look good on you! And the purple would bring out the darkness of your hair more than the black would. Contrast, and when you're in the sun the highlights can look violet sometimes."

Blake cocked her head to the side at that. "They do?"

Weiss nodded tightly.

"You really like my hair or something? Pay that much attention to it?" Blake teased, reaching over to give Weiss a light poke on the arm. Light enough that it didn't trigger Weiss' twitch from physical contact.

"I just notice colors," Weiss said truthfully. "An… artist's tick I never shook even after I quit painting."

"Uh-huh."

"Just go ask to try it on and stop being annoying," Weiss huffed. "Or I'm gonna get you a parka instead."

"That… is a very lame threat."

She hadn't really _wanted _to make a good threat, but now that Blake had said that, Weiss felt compelled to deliver one. "Fine, we can settle this between Myrtenaster and Gambol Shroud!"

That made Blake snort a laugh. "That's better. A little Ruby-ish, with the referring to weapons like people, but pretty good. And I'd love to duel you, actually."

"Well-! Oh, yeah?"

"Sure! Fighting is fun. It's like dancing but doing it well might actually help you in life. And sword fights are the best kind."

That was an interesting way to look at it.

Wait, did that mean Blake wanted to dance with her?!

'_No, that's stupid.'_

"So I just go ask the guy if I can try on a purple one of these?" Blake asked, pointing towards the worker waiting at the desk flipping through some papers.

"Correct."

"Mm," Blake hummed, idling nervously.

Did talking to strangers bother her too?

"I can ask him for you," Weiss offered. She never relished instigating conversations with strangers, but the customer-employee relationship dynamic was one that she was familiar and comfortable with. She wanted things, the employee provided them. It was simple and clean.

Blake nodded eagerly at Weiss' offer, which Weiss hadn't really expected. She's always thought Blake was the Quiet Confidence to match Yang's Loud, but apparently this man in a suit made her nervous.

That was fine. This was a moment Weiss could step up in. It was… not really comparable to Blake helping her through the Hunt yesterday, but still… it was something.

"Excuse me," Weiss said as she approached the counter. There was no way he hadn't noticed her walking up to him, but he continued skimming through what looked like a catalogue until Weiss addressed him. Then he straightened up and gave her wide Customer Service Smile.

"Yes ma'am! How can I help you?"

"My friend would like to try on the, ah, Nightspice? Size… One? The purple and black if you have it."

Size 1 seemed like a good guess. Blake was pretty much the same size as Weiss. She just had a little more… _more_ on her. In certain places.

The employee nodded, then nodded past Weiss to Blake, who gave him an awkward little wave. "I'll be right back with that," he said, then turned and headed into the back.

As Weiss walked back over to Blake, Yang joined them.

"Whatcha getting?" she asked. Then her eyes fell on the Nightspice and widened. "Oh, _please_ tell me it's that one. Blake, you'd look sooo-"

"It's that one," Blake interrupted her.

"Yessss," Yang hissed under her breath, making Blake roll her eyes and blush.

"I'm _just_ trying it on. I don't know if I'm gonna-"

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. You getting the purple one? That's what these cards mean, right Weiss? The different colors they come in."

Weiss was feeling a little pink in the face just from secondhand embarrassment for Blake. Yang was… _incredibly_ forward.

She nodded in reply.

"Weiss!" Ruby screeched, practically bounding into her from out of nowhere. "Try this hat on!" She tried to mash it down on Weiss' head herself before Weiss could even respond, but Weiss ducked away.

"Ruby! Behave! And…" She looked at the hat. It was one of those boxy thinbrim hats that hip hop artists and punks and gangsters like to wear. Disgusting. The _only_ redeeming feature about it was it was white, with dark blue cursive lettering spelling out 'Cerise' across the front.

In cursive. Ugh.

"... That's gross," she finished.

"Wei-eissss," Ruby whined, bouncing up and down. "You _promised_ to try on the stuff I picked!"

"Oooooh," Yang cooed, grinning wickedly. "_Did_ she now?"

'_Shit.'_

"Yeah! So she _has_ to try this hat on!" Ruby reiterated.

Weiss huffed, annoyed by _all_ of this. "If you're gonna force me to wear a hat, can't you find, like, a cute beret or a flatcap or something?"

"No!"

Yang snorted. "Berets. You're such a dork."

"I look cute in berets!" Weiss protested, struggling to keep her voice at a respectful, low volume.

"I'm sure you do," Yang placated her. "But I bet you'd look cute with this too."

"Hmph."

"You promised Rubyyy," she sing-songed.

"Yeah, you promised!" Ruby said _again_, for some reason.

Weiss could try denying this, say she never made such a promise, but… that would mean trying to convince Yang that _Ruby_ was lying…

It would probably be impossible to convince a random stranger off the street that Ruby would lie.

Thinking about strangers prompted Weiss to glance around at the other people in the store. The lone green-haired girl was watching them (understandable with how loud and obnoxious these two buffoons were being) from behind a jewelry display, though she looked away was soon as Weiss made eye contact with her. The couple was still looking at ties. The two probably-sisters in sundresses had apparently left.

Probably to get away from this shrieking bobblehead that was still trying to jam a hat on Weiss' head.

"Fine!" Weiss hissed, snatching the disgusting thing from Ruby's hands. She took a deep breath, then daintily placed it on top of her head, letting it touch as little of her hair as possible.

"... You look dumb," Ruby grumped at her.

Weiss knew it was because she hadn't really put the hat on, just stacked it on her head, but she tried to use Ruby's judgement as an excuse anyway.

"Exactly!"

"No!" Yang snarked, her hand whipping out to grab the hat right before Weiss was about to take it off. "That's 'cause you're wearing it wrong and you know it."

Weiss put on the grumpiest frown she could manage, but Yang ignored it. She undid the velcro strap on the back of the cap (because these savages wanted to make Weiss wear _velcro_, apparently) and then stepped up to Weiss to wrap the straps around her head.

The sudden invasion of personal space and Yang's sheer, physical presence made Weiss freeze. The scent of cinnamon from Yang's hair was suddenly overwhelming as Yang pressed the velcro bits back together underneath Weiss' ponytail. When she pulled back, one of her hands brushed Weiss' ears and Weiss almost flinch from how ridiculously hot Yang's skin was.

Apparently Yang felt something too, because she blinked wide and pressed the backs of her fingers against Weiss' cheek, muttering, "How are you _so _cold?"

"Just contrast from you being so hot," Weiss guessed quietly.

"Ayyyyy," Yang said with a grin. She snapped her fingers and pointed two finger guns at Weiss.

"Are you physically capable of _not_ acting like an idiot when someone says that?" Blake sighed.

"Nope!"

"You look super cute, Weiss!" Ruby perked up.

Of course, Weiss couldn't believe that. She felt like some sort of thug. She gave Ruby a frown to communicate her disatisfaction. Maybe if she just looked extra miserable with this thing on her head then Ruby would give up on it.

The expression just made Ruby giggle though, which Weiss honestly should have seen coming at this point.

Ruby reached up to give the brim of the hat a tiny wiggle, then giggled again.

"She's right, Weiss," Blake added. "It looks good."

"You somehow make a windball cap look _pretty_," Yang said incredulously. "How does that even work?"

"It's 'cause Weiss is so pretty," Ruby stated simply, nodding to herself.

What was with everyone today and making Weiss blush?

If Blake and Yang were saying it looked good too, maybe Weiss should go take a look in a mirror. There were a couple around the store. She could just take a quick peek…

The employee walked out from the back of the store, a dress on a hanger and in a clear protective sheet of plastic draped over one arm. He approached the group, gave them all a cursory once-over, then presented the garment to Blake.

"Your dress, madam."

Blake took it gingerly. "'Madam', am I? I like the sound of that."

"Well, you're shopping with _me_ now, so you can get used to that," Weiss preened with a smile, rocking up onto her toes and clasping her hands together behind her.

Weirdly, Blake didn't break into a happy, grateful smile at that. Instead, she frowned.

Weiss really didn't get people sometimes. She thought she'd said something nice.

"The changing room is right this way," the employee said, leading Blake away.

Ruby tugged on Weiss' hand. "Come check out how cute you look!" she chirped, dragging Weiss towards the nearest body-sized mirror.

She looked… hm.

The hat was still atrocious, of course. It looked thugish and poor, like something a faunus should wear, not Weiss Schnee. And it was angled because Weiss' ponytail was off-centered, which made it look even _more_ base. But… well, it was hard to argue with Ruby: Weiss was very pretty. So maybe in _this_ case… the hat looked pretty cute. On Weiss!

"See?" Ruby smiled at her in the mirror. "You look like a hipster princess!"

"Oh gods, get this off me," Weiss grimaced, reaching up to remove the hat..

Ruby blanched and started waving her hands around erratically. "What?! No, I meant that as a compliment!"

She grabbed onto Weiss' wrists, something that set subconscious alarm bells ringing in Weiss' head, but instead of… doing anything violent, Ruby just hugged Weiss' arms to her chest and gave her a pleading pout.

"Don't take it ooooooff!" she whined.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Let go of me ,dolt."

"Not until you promise!"

Struggling a bit to maneuver her hands around, Weiss was able to push a finger up to poke Ruby's cheek. "Leggo!"

"No!" Ruby squeaked, squeezing her eyes shut and puffing out her lower lip as Weiss continued to poke her.

Obstinate little dolt.

"Fine, I promise not to take it off," Weiss conceded. If looking like a 'hipster princess' would get her her hands back, it was… probably worth it?

"Yesss!" Ruby grinned, releasing Weiss' hands.

Weiss rubbed at her wrists and gave Ruby a glare, but the girl didn't notice or didn't mind.

"You're gonna get it, right?" Ruby asked excitedly. "You gotta get it. I'm choosing it, and you said you'd g-"

"Yes, fine! I'll get it! Stop being annoying!"

"Woohoo!" cheered Ruby, bouncing forward to give Weiss a quick hug. "I'll go find more stuff!" she rushed out before speed-shuffling away.

Weiss took a moment to look at herself in the mirror a bit more. It _was_ pretty cute on her. Although the angle was obnoxious. She took it off and undid her ponytail, then pulled it back together in a centered spot, then put the hat back on.

Better.

Blake was off in the changing room now and Ruby had run off (to the Men's belt rack, for whatever reason), so Weiss faced the choice of browsing in solitude-which sounded great-or walking back over to Yang, which…

Ugh. They were here mostly _because_ Yang had wanted to do some clothes shopping with Weiss. It would only be considerate to go join her.

Plus, she'd been right about this hat looking good on Weiss, so she was in Weiss' good books right now.

She was browsing the casual tops and turned to greet Weiss when she approached.

"Oh, your ponytail has a symmetrical setting, huh?" she joked, making Weiss roll her eyes. "It looks good," she added quickly. Then she held up one of the blouses she had been looking at and placed it in front of her torso. "Whadaya think?"

It was a crop top, a frilly red thing with tassels dangling down from the hem. Very cute, actually, but…

"What would you wear under it?" Weiss asked, already suspecting the answer.

"Why would I need to wear anything under it?" Yang replied.

Another eyeroll. This wasn't an issue of style-Yang looked great in crop tops. But they were supposed to be a respectable team of huntresses, and their public persona shouldn't be them dressed like… all slutty and stuff.

Weiss couldn't bring herself to voice that, though. It would just lead to an argument and Yang wouldn't listen anyway.

Yang moved past the issue. "What do you think, this red one or the orange one?" She grabbed an orange version of the top from the rack and pressed that to her front instead. No color cards here, just a single example blouse of each of the available colors.

"Orange," Weiss answered easily. It went with Yang's hair more. Plus, red was Ruby's color.

"'Kay."

Speaking of the red one, this would look pretty cute on a certain someone…

"Hey, Ruby!" Weiss whisper-shouted to her partner, (thankfully) drawing her away from the belts.

"Yeah!" she said as she bounced over to Weiss' side.

"What do you think of this one?" Weiss asked her, pointing at the red crop top still in Yang's hand.

Yang held it up to Ruby's chest. "Bet you'd look like a cutie patootie," she said.

"It's so short, though," Ruby said, tugging down on one of the tassels.

"You can just wear something under it," Weiss reminded her.

"Or not," Yang added, playfully narrowing her eyes at Weiss.

Ruby shook her head, though. "I just meant these little bobby thingies might tickle me," she said. She knocked the tassels at the hem from side to side.

"Tassels," Weiss informed her with a roll of her eyes, "and if you wear a shirt under it, how would they tickle you?"

"Hm… True! I'll go try it on!" She skipped over to the counter to talk to the worker and Weiss didn't have it in her to yell at the girl to slow down and walk like a normal human.

Yang wandered around, inspecting the various clothes hung on the wall, and Weiss decided to check out some of the shoes on the tables in the middle of the store. Would Yang be able to walk in heels, or was she as cluelessly unfeminine as Ruby was?

Although… they couldn't really be blamed for that, could they? Their mom was gone. _Both_ of Yang's moms were gone. So… maybe it was forgivable if they hadn't been trained to walk in heels.

That was one of the few pleasant memories Weiss had of her mother. It made her sad to think that Ruby and Yang might never have had that, especially considering how much more loving their relationship with Summer was than Weiss' was with her own mother.

There were a few lower key heels to choose from: an ankle boot, a block heeled sandal, even a pump with a sling back heel (that looked atrocious). Maybe it had been wrong of Weiss to start Ruby off with stilettos, when considering what she was now. Even Weiss' mother had started her off small…

Hm.

These ankle boots were cute, and would fit with both of the sisters' styles. They'd probably both be fine walking in them, considering their combat boots had heels that were almost as ta-

"Hey," a voice said from behind her.

It was Ruby. Weird, she'd sounded… not-bubbly enough. And she didn't have the wide-eyed uber-happy expression that was her norm. She was holding a red faux-leather pants in her hands and standing an abnormally long distance away. Usually she had no issues just jumping into Weiss' face.

And wasn't she supposed to be trying on the tasseled crop top right now?

"Hey," Weiss smiled at her, injecting artificial cheer into her voice to try to get Ruby to… perk up, or something. Subdued Ruby was off-putting. "What's up?"

Ruby held the jacket out to her, still not stepping closer. "Try this on. Uh, please."

Why was she being so weird?

"Okayyy," Weiss said, slowly inching forward and reaching out to grab the pants.

"Red's _your_ color, though," she told her partner. "Did you see if there's a blue or a white or a grey or something?"

Ruby shrugged. "I… think the red would look good on you. Go try it on. I can hold your purse."

"My…? Uh, okay." Weiss would have been fine just bringing her clutch with her, but it made no difference to her. Ruby would do anything terrible with it anyway. She was Ruby.

Maybe she wanted to snoop in Weiss' stuff for gift ideas. Weiss was pretty certain the dolt was still trying to scheme up a present to get Weiss for no reason whatsoever. As long as she didn't bankrupt herself and Yang trying to get those earrings, Weiss wouldn't mind. It was cute, and Weiss would just end up spending more on the doofus to cover the cost of whatever her gift was anyway.

Also, Weiss was a little eager to see what kind of gift Ruby would get her. The last one, the paints, were… well, they reduced Weiss to a sobbing, blubbering mess, but once she got over that she was so happy to have them.

Hopefully Ruby would at least wait until her birthday or Vytal Day before she threw a present at Weiss though, so Weiss would be ready to reciprocate.

"Alright," Weiss said, handing Ruby her clutch. "Don't lose that."

Ruby nodded.

"Did you already try on the crop top?" Weiss asked. "I wanted to see."

"Oh, uh… not yet. I was gonna, but I saw this and wanted to give it to you," she said, staring at the floor.

The longer response gave Weiss a chance to listen to her partner and realize another thing that felt off right now. Ruby sounded different. Like her voice was lower, quieter-not just in the volume sense, but in the expressive sense-and the usual inflection points and lilt to her words was all off.

Was she just really nervous or excited to see Weiss in this jacket or something?

Weird.

Weiss honestly had no idea what to think of this random shift in behaviour. Maybe Yang could give her a translation of this later. Weiss could see her now in her peripheral vision looking at something in the corner formed by a wall jutting out in the middle of the store.

"Alright," she said again. "Be right back."

She weaved through the display tables to approach the counter in the back where the employee was.

"Sir, could I use a changing room?"

"Apologies, miss," he answered. "They are both currently occupied."

"Ah. I'll wait then."

"Unless your friends are fine with you joining one of them?" he suggested tentatively.

Eh. _Weiss_ wouldn't be too crazy about that. She wouldn't want to take her skirt off with Blake _or_ Y-

Wait, Yang was still out here. Weiss had just seen her. She turned to see Yang walking briskly towards her, a confused frown on her face.

And Weiss was confused too. So Ruby was in the other room?

She looked around at the rest of the store. The couple was still in the men's section and the green-haired girl was near where Weiss had just been talking to Ruby, heading towards the door. Nobody else was there. So Ruby _was_ in the changing room now. Had she just run past Weiss to the changing room just now without Weiss noticing?

Yang reached her and blinked at her in confusion. "Yo, Weiss."

"Hm," Weiss intoned, still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

"Why… did you give that girl your purse?"

That… was strange. "'That girl'? You mean Ruby?"

Yang frowned at her. "That wasn't…" She trailed off and turned to look at the green-haired girl, who was now pushing the door open.

"Hey-HEY!" Yang shouted, breaking into a run towards the stranger, making Weiss jump out of her skin and startling the couple off to the side too.

The green-haired girl started running, dashing out of view past the right window of the storefront.

Did… was that Weiss' clutch in her hand?!

How did she take it from Ruby?! _When_ did she take it from Ruby?!

"I-" Weiss started, before cutting herself off.

Who was she talking to?

The door bell rang as Yang dashed outside to chase after the girl.

'_Damn it, Weiss, _do _something!'_

She hated herself when she froze like this. Indecisiveness wasn't even the issue here; it was pretty clear she should be running after the girl with her purse. And yet she was still standing here, frozen.

"Gah!"

She turned and laid the pants on the counter in front of the employee. "Sorry!" she wailed, before turning to sprint after Yang and the thief, who were now both out of view.

Her glyphs helped her move fast, though she was in heels instead of her combat boots, and maintaining her balance was a lot harder in these. She almost launched herself into the doorframe, slamming her hands into the glass to stop her momentum, which she immediately felt guilty about. There were fingerprints on the glass now.

'_Damn it, Weiss, that's not important!'_

The bell dinged again as Weiss yanked the door open. It was bright outside, not a cloud in the sky to filter the sunlight, and it took a second for Weiss' eyes to adjust from the dimness she'd just come from.

Once that was done, though, it was easy to spot Yang's abnormally bright yellow hair bouncing up and down through the light crowd as she sprinted down the sidewalk a ways away. It looked like the thief was just running past storefronts towards the exit of the plaza.

Startled pedestrians that the thief and Yang had pushed past separated Weiss from the other two, and she didn't have any desire to push through a bunch of people herself. Instead, she launched herself up and made a bridge of glyphs about ten feet above the sidewalk, skating along that.

She was gaining ground pretty quickly.

From up here she could see the thief too, and she saw the girl dash into an alley separating two of the stores.

Freaking thieves and their freaking alleys.

Yang ran after her, and Weiss was now only about fifteen feet behind her. When she rounded the corner, Weiss could see the girl about halfway down the alley, trying to climb up the side of the building on the left. She flicked her hand out and summoned a white glyph right where the girl was about to place her hand, shoving a blast of aura through it to expand the push effect of the glyph out. The force hit the girl's hand, sending her arm reeling back and knocking the girl away from the wall as she let out a cry of surprise. She fell six feet down to the ground, and Weiss was barely quick enough to get a black glyph right underneath the girl before she landed on her ass. The thief let out another shout as she hit the ground, either of surprise or pain or both.

She was pinned down by the glyph now, and evidently wasn't able to get out. She also clearly didn't seem to understand what the glyph was, throwing her weight against it and audibly crying, "No no no no!"

Yang ran up to the trapped girl, flicking her wrists to expand her gauntlets and standing above the girl, fists raised. Weiss hadn't even realized Yang had Ember Celica on her. Guess there was something to be said about having a weapon that was easily concealable as jewelry.

The thief froze at Yang standing over her, clearly terrified. Even from all the way over here, Weiss could see the whites of her eyes.

Weiss dropped down to the ground and walked over, keeping her glyph up to keep the girl in place.

Yang reached down and snatched Weiss' clutch from the girl, who let out a shriek that must have been surprise or fear because Yang didn't actually hurt her.

When Weiss approached, Yang held her clutch out to her, not turning away from glaring down at the girl in front of them.

"Thank you, Yang."

"Mm."

The thief was still wide-eyed, eyes flicking back and forth between Weiss and Yang. "Please don't hurt me," she whimpered.

"We're not-" Weiss started.

"Why did Weiss think you were my sister?" Yang spat, cutting Weiss off.

Oh, right.

"I-I…" the girl stammered, still going all deer-in-headlights. "The girl in red?"

"Yeah, the _girl in red_," Yang growled. "You got some sort of illusion semblance?"

The girl swallowed, then nodded.

Something about the way it was spelled out now made Weiss start to hyperventilate. Someone who didn't even know Weiss was able to manipulate her with her relationship to Ruby. There was no way Weiss would ever have given her clutch to anyone else.

She let herself get too close, and this was the price she paid.

Weakness. Stupidity.

Now she was angry.

"Who sent you?" she demanded, taking a half-step forward and balling her fist.

From the way the girl jerked, she was clearly trying to scramble back but couldn't because of Weiss' glyph. Weiss dialed up the aura she was pouring into it just a tad, making the girl whimper a bit.

"What were you after?" Weiss pressed. "My scroll? Who wants it? _Who sent you?_"

If someone wanted to get her scroll for company secrets, they'd be sorely disappointed. Weiss didn't have anything saved on her scroll. Father had even had it security checked before she left for Beacon.

Although she did have contact info for a some important people on there, like her father and Winter and a few SDC board members that she never talked to. Their scroll IDs might be worth a lot of-

"What? N-no! I just… I just wanted your wallet." The thief looked like she was trying to hide her face in shame but couldn't move her arms, so she settled on craning her neck away.

"Why?" Weiss followed up. "Trying to get my ID? I don't even carry my KCID with me, and-"

"No!" the girl interrupted her. "I-I just wanted your money… Because I don't have any, and you look like you have a lot."

"... Oh."

Weiss relaxed a bit. So this was just a simple robbery, assuming the girl was telling the truth. It wasn't about Weiss being a Schnee-or it was, but only indirectly in that it made her rich.

She noticed Yang unclench her fists, her expression softening to… was that sympathy?

"Weiss, let her go," she said quietly.

After a moment's hesitation, Weiss obliged. It wasn't like the thief could go anywhere.

As soon as she was free of Weiss' glyph, the girl scrabbled back to the wall behind her and hugged her knees to her chest, turtling up and staring fearfully up at them. Her shoulders heaved up and down as she panic-panted.

With a series of clicks and whirs, Yang set her gauntlets back to "bracelet mode". She held her hands up in the air and approached the girl slowly, like she was a frightened animal or something.

Weiss supposed in some ways, she was.

The girl made no attempt to flee, and seemed to calm down a little at Yang's more soothing new demeanor.

Weiss had absolutely no idea what Yang was doing now.

When she was about a foot away from the girl, Yang knelt down to put herself at eye level with her.

"Hey," she said.

The girl made some grunty-whimper noise of acknowledgement in response.

The way they were positioned, Yang's back was to Weiss now, so Weiss circled around to the side a bit to get a better look at her face in the vain hope that she could discern something about what the hell they were doing right now from Yang's expression. The girl didn't seemed to think Weiss was getting into position to attack her or something, though, because she reacted with more hyperventilation and pushed herself to the side a bit to try to keep Yang between herself and Weiss.

Yang raised her hands and tried to calm her back down. "Shhh. Sh sh sh. Hey, we're not gonna hurt you. Hey, relax." She waited until the girl met her eyes before she spoke again. "I'm Yang. What's your name?"

'_So we're just playing Introductions with a criminal now, are we?'_

The girl responded with an almost-whisper that Weiss couldn't make out, but apparently Yang had heard.

"Hi, Emerald," she said. "How old are you?"

"... Sixteen," Emerald answered hesitantly.

Yang gave her a good natured smile. "Well at least I'm older than _someone_ today."

Emerald just frowned in confusion at her though, because she wasn't in on the reference that Yang was making.

Yang floundered a bit as her joke failed to get a reaction (Weiss honestly wasn't sure what the buffoon was expecting, but whatever). "Ahem! Um… Where do you live, Emerald?"

Emerald shrugged as much as she was able while squeezing her knees to her chest.

Weiss didn't blame her for not answering. If someone you'd just attempted to rob asked you where you lived, that might seem a bit concerning. She also wasn't sure why Yang wanted to know.

Yang glanced over at Weiss, frowning in a way that Weiss took to mean she trying to figure out how to say something.

She turned back to Emerald. "Do… do you _have_ a home?"

Emerald's lower lip trembled slightly as she shook her head.

'_Oh.'_

Yang sucked in a breath and again glanced at Weiss, who returned the eye contact with the best 'what the Crucible are you looking at me for?' look she could manage. Weiss had absolutely no clue what they were supposed to do here. _She_ wanted to call the police, but now that she knew this girl was underage and homeless… that felt a little mean.

"What… um…" Yang started again, trying to find words. "Where are your parents?"

Again, Emerald shrugged, but after a few seconds of silence while Yang struggled to figure out what to say next, she whispered, "Saffron Hills."

Saffron Hills? Wasn't that in the Vale City metroplex?

And it meant she wasn't an orphan.

"Saf-so why aren't you with them?" Yang asked, perplexed.

Emerald shook her head. "They're… not nice people."

Weiss snorted at that dismissively. Her parents weren't nice either. That wasn't an excuse to make yourself a criminal hobo.

Yang shot her a glare that instinctively made Weiss feel like she'd done something wrong, but then her rationale caught up to her and she glared back indignantly. Yang rolled her eyes angrily at her and turned back to Emerald.

"Do you, um, have you tried going to a shelter or, like, an orphanage or something?"

Emerald nodded, then quickly shook her head. "They just try to send me back to… them."

"And that's… very bad?" Yang asked, fishing for more clarification.

Emerald just nodded.

Giving up on getting more info on that, Yang sighed and sat back on her heels. One side of her mouth creased down in a thoughtful frown as she looked at Emerald. A long moment passed, then Yang took a deep breath and nodded her chin at the girl.

"How much money you got?"

"W-what?" Emerald stammered, her eyes going wide. Weiss didn't really understand that reaction, but Yang read into it better than she did.

"I'm not trying to take anything from you!" Yang said quickly. "I just meant, like, do you have enough for food?"

"N-no. I don't have anything."

Weiss wanted to comment that she should try getting a job, but it didn't feel like a good time for such a remark. Besides, she must have already tried, right? Unless she was just a total idiot.

"What are you going to do for food tonight?" Yang asked.

Emerald glanced over at the clutch Weiss was gripping in her hand, then back at Yang. "W-well, there's a waiter at a diner close by that brings leftover plates out back to me. Hopefully he's working tonight. If not, I… I might-I was probably gonna steal something." She looked down at the ground between her legs as she finished.

Yep. This girl was a criminal. Wasn't their responsibility as huntresses to turn her over to the authorities, not sit here talking nicely to her and trying to relate and make friendly conversation?

Yang apparently didn't feel the same, though. She sighed sadly again and picked at the bottom of her shorts for a couple seconds before setting her jaw. Reaching back, she pulled her thin wallet out of her back pocket and flicked it open. "Here," she said, pulling out the stack of paper lien she had.

"What?! Yang-"

"Shut up, Weiss," Yang shot at her, not venomous but forceful enough that Weiss immediately obliged.

"I've got… this should be seventy…" Yang counted out the bills she held while Emerald stared wide-eyed, her focus darting between the lien and Yang's face. "Yeah, seventy-five lien. It's all the cash I've got, but hopefully it will help you. Should keep you fed for a bit at least."

"I-I don't know what to say," Emerald sputtered quietly.

"You don't have to say anything," Yang replied softly. "I'm sorry that this is happening to you."

That simple sentence cracked whatever composure Emerald had built up. Her lower lip trembled again and tears built up in her eyes, one of them spilling over her lashes and flowing down her cheek.

Yang gave her a small, sad smile. "You sure you can't go to a shelter or Child Services or something?"

Another tear splashed down her cheek as Emerald shook her head again, which was a potentially confusing answer considering the way the question was phrased, but Yang assumed the intent and moved on.

"You got any friends you could stay with?"

"I-" Emerald stopped as her voice cracked, and she sniffled and whipped a bare arm across her eyes before trying again. "I wore out all their charity already."

Yang looked over at Weiss with a pained expression, though Weiss kept her face blank.

"Well," Yang started, "you're sixteen, right? You could try, um… We go to Beacon-"

"_Yang!" _Weiss hissed.

Why the hell was she telling this _thief_ where they live and go to school?!

Yang just ignored her though. "You've got aura and a semblance that you've clearly got a hang of," she continued.

That reminder just pissed Weiss off even more. This girl had manipulated her using her relationship with Ruby. _Ruby_, who was the one genuinely pure and perfectly good person Weiss had ever met. The fact that something so good had been twisted into something so wrong was… it made Weiss' skin itch and her stomach turn.

And it made her _furious_.

"I could ask the professors, see if they'll let you do, like, a tryout or something," Yang said. "Maybe you could get in. My sister got a scholarship, maybe you could too."

The idea that someone like this could get into Beacon-the fact that Yang was even entertaining the idea-was so… There weren't words for how mad Weiss was right now. She wanted to scream at Yang to stop, that they should call the police and get this criminal behind bars, that anybody that could use Ruby for something as base as petty theft didn't deserve people to be nice to her. She couldn't, though. She was doing that thing she does when she gets emotional, just freezing. The hand holding her clutch was squeezing so hard she almost feel her fingernails biting into her palm through the thin leather and the other was balled into a fist that she was dimly aware was shaking at her side, but beyond that she felt like she couldn't move. Definitely couldn't speak.

"Y-you would do that?" Emerald asked, tears now streaming down her face in rivers.

"I can't promise anything," Yang said quickly. "But I can ask."

Emerald's chest heaved with emotion and her face contorted like she was about to start openly sobbing, but then she quickly changed her expression, glaring at Yang intensely. Yang frowned in confusion, taken aback, but this… this was one time Weiss was able to read expressions better, at least. She knew this face, what Emerald was doing. It was one she'd put on many times in shouting matches with her parents. She wasn't really angry, it was just easier to hold back tears through a glare.

That one tiny bit of relatability served to abate a good deal of Weiss' own anger.

"Are-are you okay?" Yang asked cautiously.

Emerald nodded emphatically, her appropriately colored hair flying around with the motion. "Yes!" she gasped. "I'm sorry, I just… thank you."

Yang nodded slowly. "You any good in a fight?"

The girl perked up, then deflated. "I dunno. I was the best in our self defense classes at school by a lot, but I'm not sure how much that's worth compared to a huntress."

"Is this at an intermediary academy?" Yang asked.

"N-no. Just… regular middle school."

"Oh. Right. Well it will definitely still help to have that."

Emerald's eyes widened and brightened and she nodded eagerly again, hanging on Yang's words, despite them being a kind lie.

Yang cleared her throat. "I, uh… Do you have a scroll?"

Emerald shook her head, then said, "Well, yes, but it doesn't have service. My… parents cut it off when I ran away." She sneered out the word 'parents' with a hateful derision that Weiss felt an unsettling kinship with.

"Well… shiet," Yang sighed. "I-I can give you my scroll ID anyway? You can go in to a library and message me if you've got a ValeMail account, and those are free."

"Y-yes, please," Emerald agreed with another, eager nod.

"Okay, um…" Yang patted her pockets like she was looking for something. "I don't-do you have a pen or something?"

"Um." Emerald started checking her own pockets. Couple of idiots. With how small girls' pockets are, you'd think it would be pretty obvious if they had a pen in one of them.

Weiss robotically opened her clutch and pulled out the pen and sticky notepad she kept in it but never used because her memory was good enough that it wasn't necessary. She basically just had it for moments like this, when _other _people were buffoons. She mutely held them out to Yang.

"Oh, sweet! Thanks Weiss," she said, grabbing them.

Weiss just nodded slightly.

Yang jotted down her scroll ID and peeled the stickynote off to hand to Emerald. The girl squinted and tilted her head as she read it.

"It's a G," Yang sighed.

"Oh," Emerald said innocently. "Dragon… Fast Nine Thousand xxx?"

"Dragon _Fist_ Nine Thousand," Yang corrected.

"Oh. Got it, thanks."

"My handwriting is _not_ that bad," Yang protested.

"Yes it is," Weiss said.

"Maaaaan, shudup."

Emerald cracked the smallest of smiles.

Yang stood and held a hand out to help the thief to her feet. "Well… that's all I've got. I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

"N-no!" Emerald quickly rejected the apology. "You've done… so much. Thank you."

Yang scratched her head nervously with one hand and snapped with the other, making a finger gun and shooting Emerald with it. "Chu got it, dude," she said with an awkward smile. "Now get outta here."

Emerald started backing away out to the front of the alley. "Thank you again," she said, looking at both Yang and Weiss, then she turned and ran off.

A moment of silence fell as Weiss and Yang both stared at the corner the criminal just disappeared around. Then Yang abruptly turned to Weiss and held out the pen and notepad.

"Don't start," she said tersely.

"I don't understand what just happened," Weiss replied, snatching her belongings back and stuffing them into her clutch.

"Yeah, that figures," Yang muttered, turning and walking off. She was moving fast, to the point Weiss almost had to jog to keep up with her, like she wanted to get back to the store as fast as possible and not have this conversation.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Weiss demanded.

Yang didn't turn around as she answered, "It _means_ sometimes it seems like you don't have a sympathetic bone in your body. Or is it empathetic? Whatever, they're both good bones and you don't have either."

"If having them means I'd do stuff like _that_, then good!" Weiss shot back. She was trying to keep her voice down to avoid drawing the attention of the other pedestrians on the sidewalk but still be loud enough that Rudey McSpeedFace here could still hear her.

Yang didn't respond.

"Yang, she impersonated your sister, stole from your teammate, and admitted that she steals from others and you rewarded her with _giving _her money and telling her you'd try to help her get into the most prestigious huntsman academy in the world!"

Yang suddenly stopped and spun to face her, so quickly that Weiss didn't react in time to not walk into her. The collision didn't even budge Yang, though, and she caught Weiss by the arms and kept her steady. For a brief moment, her grip was tight enough that Weiss felt a little bit… not _scared_, but… concerned. It was only a moment, though, and it passed quickly enough that Weiss felt like it might be dismissable as just reflex.

Yang held Weiss' forearms to help her keep balance as she settled at arms length, then let her go to just stare at her with a look of exasperation.

"What?" Weiss challenged her.

"How can you-!" Yang shot off, quickly and angrily, before stopping herself. She let out a deep breath and glared at the ground.

A second passed. Then three. Then five. Then Yang met Weiss' eyes again. "Weiss, what was the worst day of your life?"

Instinctually, Weiss wanted to shoot off an answer along the lines of 'the day I got stuck on a team with you', but that wouldn't be nice or fair or true. One specific day immediately came to mind: her 10th birthday, when her parents had had the shouting match that ended up fracturing the nice, fragile illusion of a functional family. They'd screamed at each other and then, when Weiss started crying because she didn't understand what was going on and felt like she'd done something wrong to start the fight, they'd screamed at her too. And then Winter had screamed at them for screaming at Weiss, and so they'd screamed at her too. And Whitley was crying the whole while, just sitting in the corner trying to look small and unnoticeable so nobody started screaming at him too.

That was the first possibility that came to mind, the day when everything broke.

There was another possible day, though, that came a week after that one. In those early days of the Post-Birthday Disaster era, Mother and Father hadn't settled into the separations they had from each other now. They had kept trying to sleep in the same bed, Mother was still trying to be active in company affairs in her role as Chief of Marketing, they'd both been feigning interest in being actual parents. It meant that once the Big Fight had happened, they were still around each other a lot, screaming and fighting on an almost hourly basis, often while their children were in the room. It had only taken a week of that for Weiss to hit the point where she…

She glanced down at her right wrist, where she knew a thing pale scar was that failed to stand out against her already extremely pale skin. There had been so many stupid reasons and justifications in her head when she did it: that she was hurting inside and felt like she should be hurting outside too, that she deserved to hurt because the Fight had been her fault, that it supposedly helped other people cope with sadness so it might help her too. Looking back at it now, though, all it looked like was a cry for help, a desperate plea to her parents to notice how much they were hurting her.

Which was stupid. Stupid and weak.

And it didn't even work anyway. They hadn't noticed.

Winter had, though, almost as soon as Weiss had walked out of her room after… doing the thing. She'd said a lot of things then. She'd made Weiss swear to never do it again. An easy promise to make-Weiss had hated the pain. And the blood. The part of that conversation that stuck out the most in that memory, though, was that it was the moment when Weiss realized just how much Winter _hated_ their parents.

The birthday was the day everything broke, but that day a week after was the day Weiss realized just how broken it was. Just how miserable _she_ was.

Apparently she spent too long wallowing in those memories, because she was pulled out by Yang talking again instead of waiting for an answer.

"Alright, you don't have to say, but I'm gonna guess it was something about your parents being shitty, yeah?"

Weiss blinked at her.

"Yeah. And I'm guessing it was awful. And I'm guessing on that day when you were at your lowest and everything sucked, you would have liked it if someone decided to be nice to you."

"I had Winter," Weiss said defiantly.

"Oh, good," Yang conceded. "So even on your worst day in your life you still had someone that was there for you. That's good."

Weiss blinked again, realizing she'd completely missed what Yang had been getting at.

"Now imagine that you didn't have Winter-that you didn't have _anybody_-and instead of going to sleep after all that awfulness in a giant… feather bed or whatever in a big castle, you had to go to sleep on the streets, hungry and cold and alone."

Weiss could have interrupted there, said she often _had_ gone to bed hungry, many times. By choice. She'd practically starved herself back then hoping her parents would see something was wrong. They hadn't, again. Even now she still barely ate, partly because she'd gotten used to eating smaller portions and partly because now she viewed food as a reward to give herself for doing well.

She knew that wasn't what Yang meant, though, so she stayed quiet as Yang continued.

"And imagine that that wasn't even the worst day of your life. Imagine that was just… your life. Every day. And you could only survive by stealing and begging for scraps. Imagine that was you. Do you think it would feel fair if someone thought about the way you're thinking about that girl right now?"

…

"Well, no, but-"

"But nothing!"

"You don't know her story! Maybe it's _her_ fault her life is like that now." Even as she spoke the words, she realized how flimsy and awful of an argument it was.

Yang's expression went a shade darker. "You don't know her story either," she said coldly. "So maybe it _isn't_ her fault. Maybe-ugh." She sputtered a bit for words, her fists noticeably clenching as she angrily tried to figure out what to say.

Then she sighed and rolled her eyes, turning away. "Whatever. Let's just go b-"

"No!" Weiss said quickly, reaching out to lightly hook Yang's blouse to try to keep her from leaving the conversation. "You-you're right. I'm sorry."

Memories of those days after the fight were flooding her mind now. Even more than the memories, the emotions she felt during them. Her pure, unfiltered misery and guilt and anger. She'd gotten so terrified of being alone with those emotions that she insisted on following Winter around all day, even during their lessons that were supposed to be separate. Their tutors had been very confused about how to handle the situation, but Winter had convinced them not to bring it up with their parents. Even as a teenager she'd had a voice of authority.

And in addition to Winter, she'd had Klein making sure every one of her needs was met and that she always had pleasant company even when Winter was out. And he _had_ noticed that she wasn't eating enough, though at the time that hadn't meant much to Weiss. Her parents had mattered more to her then.

Stupid girl.

If Weiss hadn't had Winter and Klein… She rubbed at her wrist. She imagined she might have ended up being somebody that current Weiss wouldn't like very much.

Yang looked at her like she'd suddenly grown a second head, then squinted at her suspiciously. "I am?"

Weiss rolled her eyes at that. "I know, it's a huge abnormality, but it's actually true."

Yang grinned and gave her the finger. "I'm right _all the time,_ fyi. I'm just surprised you're admit-did you just say '_abnormality'_?"

"... Yes? It's a perfectly good word!"

"Heh," she grinned. "Well I'm glad you agree."

"I still think the Beacon thing was too far."

Yang rolled her eyes again. "Literally all I said was I'd _ask_."

"There are people that train their _whole lives_ for a spot in Beacon."

"Yeah, well that's not what gets you in. _Skill_ does, so if she's skilled enough then… whatever. I doubt she will be anyway."

"Then why-"

"I don't know, dude!" Yang bursted out, flailing her arms in that Yang way and turning to walk back to the store. "She's freaking homeless and I was trying to give her options! Fuck off!"

That explosive reaction told Weiss that Yang might be thinking that the idea had been a mistake too. "Okay, I'm sorry!" she cried, hurrying to Yang's side. She wasn't sure why, but it was imperative to her to make sure Yang wasn't mad at her.

Stupid.

"... Shit, dude, did you see how hopeful she looked?" Yang muttered, quiet enough that Weiss wasn't sure whether the words were meant for her or not. "Fack."

"I'm sure it will all be okay," Weiss lied. That was what she was supposed to say, right? She still thought they should have called the police. If not to arrest her, at least to send her back home and get her off the streets. But instead of doing anything about it, she just froze and let Yang do her thing, so…

One of the many things that Weiss really, _really_ hated about herself.

They got in sight of the front of Cerise Moran's and both stopped. Ruby was on the other side of the nearest window-wall, hopping up and down and waving at them and yelling words they couldn't hear.

"Oh dear," Weiss said quietly.

"Mm," Yang agreed with a smile. She turned to Weiss. "You good?"

"Um…" Weiss wasn't really sure what she meant by that. She was physically fine and had her clutch back. Emotionally she was… fine? Taking a walk through her past had been a bit of a downer, but… they were just memories. They couldn't hurt her. She refused to let them. And Ruby was just on the other side of a pane of glass. Once they were reunited, Weiss was sure she'd cheer up.

Wait, where was that coming from?

"Maybe just don't mention that whole thing to Ruby, yeah?" Yang said. "She can't really… deal with stuff like homelessness or abusive parents and whatnot. So she just gets sad. Which is sad itself."

"Alright," Weiss agreed. That… sounded like Ruby. Although she wouldn't get any better at dealing with that kind of stuff if she was shielded from it, and… huntresses were probably going to end up exposed to a lot of it.

"Aight, c'mon, before Ruby explodes," Yang said.

A quick glance told Weiss the Ruby's bouncing and flailing had gotten even more erratic as Weiss and Yang had stopped in front of her.

She began her word volcano eruption of doom before the door's announcement bell had even started dinging.

"Guyswhattheheck! The dude said you guys ran after a thief and Blake and I were gonna follow but then he told us we couldn't leave 'cause we were wearing store clothes-"

"Ruby," Weiss tried to interrupt.

"-and I was like 'hm' and then we started waiting but then I thought maybe I should change back to chase after you guys and help-"

"Ruby."

"-'cause I'm super fast and I could chase down the bad guy and like superhero tackle them but then Blake was like 'nah they got it' and I wasn't sure so I was waiting at the window for like EVER and then you-"

"Ruby!"

Ruby stopped and blinked at her.

"We're fine. We got my purse back. And… that's it. We did it."

"Butwhahappened?!" Ruby blurted. "How'd someone even steal from you?! You're a wizard!"

"Oh, well-"

"Daaaaaaaaaamn, girl!" Yang cooed loudly, abruptly cutting Weiss off and making her follow the blonde's gaze.

'_What?... Oh.'_

It was Blake. In the Nightspice dress. Leaning against one of the shoe display tables, giving Yang a seductive grin.

"What do you think?" she asked, even though it was pretty obvious what Yang thought.

And Weiss had to agree with her.

"Ahem! Excuse me, ladies," Yang said, pushing between Weiss and Ruby to walk over to her partner.

Weiss sighed and rolled her eyes. When she turned back to her own partner, though, she found Ruby staring at her expectantly, wide-eyed and slightly vibrating up and down on the balls of her feet.

"What?" Weiss demanded.

"How'dsomeonestealfromawizard?!"

"Oh, right." Weiss grimaced. How much detail did she have to give here? She couldn't lie to Ruby, obviously, but she didn't necessarily have to say _everything_, right?

"She asked me for my clutch."

Ruby's brow furrowed. "Your what?"

"My purse."

"Oh, right. Wait, she really just walked up and asked you for it?"

"Mhm."

"Huh. And… you gave it to her?"

Weiss inspected her toes, making sure she hadn't scuffed her heels during the chase… No, they looked fine. "Yes."

"Um. Does breakfast sausage make you go mildly crazy or something?"

Weiss couldn't help cracking a smile at that. "Guess so."

"That makes no sense," Ruby pouted.

"Well _you_ said it!"

"But why would you give a stranger your stuff?!"

Weiss stomped a foot impatiently. "I thought she was you!"

The look Ruby gave her was so strikingly similar to the when Yang had given her when she'd told her she was right. Bewildered concern. "Uh, do I have like a secret, long lost evil doppelganger twin or something?" she asked.

"No, dolt. The thief had some sort of illusion semblance that made her look like you. She walked up and asked me for your purse and…"

"Awww, and you just gave it to me? I mean her. Her-me?"

Weiss rolled her eyes.

"But why would I want your purse?" Ruby mused.

"She gave me some pants and told me to go try them on and she'd hold my purse for me," Weiss explained, annoyed and ready to talk about something else.

"Oh. But couldn't you just take it in-"

"_I thought she was you!_" Weiss whisper-screamed. "Why would I ever think that _you'd_ do something bad with my stuff?!"

That admission of blind trust made Weiss blush, which made her angry because she felt like she was being dumb.

Ruby blinked at her. "... True. I could totally prank you and fill it with Cheez-Whiz if I wanted."

For about the billionth time, Weiss was mentally floored at Ruby's reaction. She didn't make a big deal about or even seem to notice anything abnormal about Weiss just blindly trusting her with her clutch. It was just assumed. Normal.

Emotions were spiralling through Weiss and she wasn't sure if she wanted to hug her partner or run away and never see her again, so she settled on following the distraction Ruby had provided.

"You don't… have any Cheez-Whiz," Weiss pointed out.

Ruby made the most comically sad face ever and slumped her shoulders forward. "I knooow."

"_Anyway_," Weiss stressed. She took a moment to fish for a change of topic, then realized that Ruby was wearing the tasseled blouse. "That looks very nice on you," she complimented her partner.

At this point she was fairly certain Ruby would look good in anything.

"Oh yeah?" Ruby perked up. She gave a goofy little spin that was much too fast for Weiss to actually get a look at how looked from the back, but the way she giggled and looked down at herself told Weiss she was probably just spinning to whip the tassels around. Dolt. "Whadaya think, should I embrace my inner Yang and take the undershirt off.

Weiss felt her cheeks pink slightly. "That's… not necessary. You already look great as it is."

"Hm," Ruby hummed. She stared down at her torso, then quickly lifted the front of her blouse up, paused, then pulled it back down. Then lifted it up again, then pulled it back down again.

'_What in the world is she doing?'_ Weiss wondered tiredly. She could ask but she doubted whatever answer she got would abate her confusion.

"Would you like to get it?" she asked instead.

"You think I should?" Ruby replied, still staring down at herself. She lifted the blouse again, then lowered it again.

"I do," Weiss encouraged her, trying to avoid laughing or having an aneurism as she watched Ruby's nonsensical antics.

"Okay!" Ruby agreed with a big smile. Then her eyes widened. "Ee-gasp! I also found something for you!"

"Oh?" Weiss said, trying to keep her apprehension out of her tone.

"C'mon!" chirped the dolt, grabbing Weiss' hand and dragging her across the store. To the Men's section.

"Ruby, slow down!" Weiss snapped.

Ruby ever so slightly slowed, bringing them to a stop in front of a wall-hung faux-leather black jacket. It had overly large steel buttons along opposite sides running down the middle and a plethora of pockets, each with a zipper seal. And there were a couple random zippers that seemed to serve no practical purpose at all, and buckles along the top running from the collar to the shoulders that could not possibly serve any practical function.

It looked like something a videogame or cartoon character would where.

Or Ruby.

It also looked somewhat… familiar…

"Ruby…"

"You promised you'd let me pick stuff for you!" Ruby wailed, taking Weiss' reaction as a rejection.

"Ruby, there's a girl version of this right over there," Weiss said, pointing almost directly across the store.

Ruby looked over at where Weiss was pointing, then back at the jacket the were standing in front of, then back across the store. "... Huh. How'd I miss that?"

"You're a dolt?" Weiss suggested.

"... Yeah, guess so. So that's a no to this one?"

Weiss half-rolled her eyes. "Ruby, my shoulders are never going to fit in a jacket cut for men."

Ruby looked down at Weiss' shoulders. "True. You are _incredibly_ princessy."

"Does 'princessy' just mean 'petite' to you?"

"It means whatever you look like!" Ruby grinned. "Like, in the Rubytionary the definition of 'princess' is just a picture of you."

Weiss suppressed a smile at that wonderful little compliment. "The Rubytionary is not and never will be a thing," she teased.

"Yuh-huh!"

"Nope."

"Just watch, I'll write it. For realz. And I'll publish it and it'll be a bestseller!"

"Nnnope!"

"Pfft, whatever. You just don't appreciate good linguicism."

Weiss blinked. "That's not… nevermind. Did you want to go look at the women's version of this?"

"Sure!" Ruby cheered, once again dragging Weiss across the store. "I hope it's got the same colors!"

"Slow-! Ugh," Weiss huffed, giving up on trying to get Ruby to install a brake system.

"Yes!" Ruby squeaked as they drew up to the display. The women's version was strikingly similar to the men's, though it was a half jacket that ended at about hip length and thus had a couple less pockets. The buckles on the shoulders were also absent. "Okay, so there's a the black, and then a white and a red. And this icky tanny-brown color, but we can forget about that one."

"You want-but red is _your_ color," Weiss protested. It was… kind of a silly argument. She'd worn red before, though not much because she felt it was too 'loud' on her. There was even a bit on the inside of her combat outfit. But now that she knew Ruby, the color felt like it _belonged_ to her.

"It could still look good on you!" Ruby said, undeterred. "Having a cute jacket like this to give you a colorful splash of poof could be nice!"

"'Splash of poof'?" Weiss repeated with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah!" Ruby smiled. "You should try it! And the white one, 'cause duh. And the black one 'cause it would look sweet. Actually, you should just get all three. You could wear the white one to look chic and the black one to look badass and the red one to look cutesy… And I could carry around the other two for you all day and you can just switch them out whenever you want to swap to a different look!"

Weiss waited patiently to make sure Ruby was done talking before she spoke up. "That's dumb," she said flatly.

"Pleeeeeeeease?" Ruby begged. She grabbed Weiss' hands and whipped them from side to side. "Pleeeeeeeeeeee-"

"Sweet Light, fine!" Weiss exclaimed in exasperation. "Let me go see if they have them to try on."

"Woohoo!" Ruby cheered in triumph. "You'll look so cool! Like a princessy anime protagonist with-awwww, what? This one doesn't have the buckley bits!"

Weiss sighed.

* * *

**Hi guys. I'm so sorry for the late update. Life has been kicking me in the ass lately. On top of personal life issues, I also got a new job (again) that pays better than what I've had before but it's boring af and I just come home mentally exhausted and depressed and unmotivated. **

**I know that's a weak excuse though. Sorry. **

**I've also been investing way too much time depressing myself keeping up with the impeachment trial. Shouldn't have bothered. It went how I knew it would and listening to it just made me sad and angry. It's over now though so I'll be able to get back to writing more. **

**Also, this chapter has some parts that hit really close to home for me that were kinda hard for me to get through. **

**Excuses and equivocations aside, I hope you like the chapter and the direction I went with Emerald. :3 I promise there will not be as big a wait for next chapter. Should be done in a week, two max. It'll be a Glynda interlude :)**

**Sorry again :/**


	37. Hunting 3-G

The constant beeping of her scroll was starting to grate on Glynda.

Actually, that was inaccurate. It had started grating on her days ago. Now it was taking every ounce of self control she had to not telekinetically slam it into the wall over and over. The fact that she had to check each message made the issue go from an auditory nuisance to something that was actively distracting her from everything she was trying to do.

She checked the latest message, fully expecting it to be another useless 'update' that wasn't actionable. As was the case in most situations, she was right.

| Cpt Hightower: 2 True moving into VC proper

| Cpt Hightower: Black confirmed not in contact with son

| Cpt. Hightower: We are fairly certain he's not in Saffron Hills

Nothing for Glynda to do with any of that, and Glynda wanted to smack this captain's hands with her riding crop for sending this useless information as three separate messages.

Ozpin had spoken to the Chairman of War and Peace, a serious man that would be healthier if he took exercise as seriously as he took his responsibility to keep the people of Vale safe. They'd decided that Ozpin, the professors of Beacon, and Qrow would be added to the city-wide police message chain that was created upon Marcus Black entering the city.

Ozpin had also decided (though he didn't tell Councilman Barnes) that he'd bring Amber in on the manhunt if that flighty, foolish girl ever checked back in with him.

Unlikely. She'd be too busy chasing butterflies and trying to 'discover herself' and her purpose to pay attention to something like a deadly threat in the heart of the kingdom.

Glynda sighed and put her scroll and her bitterness away. Ozpin had told her not to be so hard on the 'girl', that she just needed time to come to recognize and accept the responsibilities that came with her powers. Glynda always argued that Amber was twenty-two, she wasn't a child. There were _actual _children that had already decided to dedicate their lives to protecting others. Glynda had made that decision herself when she was ten. From what Summer told them, her little daughter Ruby had made that decision when she was _three_. So why Oz was being so patient with Amber when she had so much potential to do so much good that was currently being squandered, Glynda didn't understand.

What _she'd_ be able to do with the power of a Maiden...

Bah, what ifs. It wouldn't be such a big deal to Glynda if it weren't for the recent agitations in Grimm around the world. Ozpin was concerned about what it meant, which meant she was too, and at the moment they only had the power of one Maiden fighting for the side of good, Winter Schnee. Amber was out wandering around with Ozpin's blessing, the Spring Maiden was missing, and the Summer Maiden was a warlord in Vacuo. If something big happened… the good guys didn't have a whole lot going for them right now.

Glynda tapped the handrest on her keyboard repeatedly in agitation. She'd finished writing up her grading of Team RWBY's performance the other day almost half an hour ago, though she had kept it open to fill in more details as they came to her, like she always did. It was unfortunate that she was so distracted right now.

She blamed the constant beeping of her scroll.

It was ten till 10 am. She'd need to meet with Ozpin and Team RWBY soon. She'd sent Oz the video file from Friday, so he'd have that ready. All that was left was to print out the grading rubric and get the girls up to Ozpin's office.

She set the page on her screen to print and fished her scroll back out to text Ruby.

| Me: Good morning, Miss Rose. Your team's review session is in ten minutes. Would you all like to meet me at the entrance to Beacon Tower? We can all go up to the headmaster's office together.

She'd rather be texting Weiss or Blake. In Glynda's opinion, they had much better temperments for being team leader. But Ozpin insisted on giving Summer's daughter a chance, and Glynda trusted him. He had never led her astray before. He'd thought _she_ was team leader material, so clearly he had a good system to figure this out. How that system had resulted in him making Glynda and Ruby Rose both team leaders seemed strange, though…

'_Maybe old age has made him senile,'_ Glynda joked to herself with a smile.

Her scroll dinged in her hand and Glynda amusingly found herself hoping it was Ruby, if only because it meant it wasn't the simpleton police.

| Ruby Rose: Suer! On our way! :D

'_Does she just not have autocorrect turned on?'_ Glynda wondered to herself. She still smiled at the sweetness of the message; it was very Ruby. She still was doubtful it was the personality of a good, effective team leader, but Summer Rose had been strikingly similar and she'd been incredible at leading her team, which had been one of the most successful in huntsman history. Until it wasn't.

But it had produced Qrow, who was one of the most capable and dedicated servants to the greater good that they had right now.

She gathered up the printed out rubric and hole punched it, binding it into the folder she'd prepared for Team RWBY. It also held the analyses Nidas had written up of the girls' sparring performances from last week (he was supposed to have given them this binder last week, but he'd finished it late, just like most of his schoolwork when he was still a student here).

It was a binder meant for Team RWBY to keep a physical documentation of their progress at Beacon. Assuming Ruby didn't lose it.

… Maybe she'd hand it to Weiss instead.

To finalize her preparations, she donned her Dust-threaded jacket and her Dust belt. She wouldn't need them until later today, and the cloth of the Dust-threads was deceptively heavy to the point the clothing often felt irritating, but it was important to show the girls that a professional huntress was always prepared for combat.

A short walk and trip down the elevator later and Glynda was standing just outside the massive doorway of Beacon Tower. The day was overcast, a visible storm rolling in from the north, currently greying out the horizon and sky above the ocean. She had less than a minute to take the scene and weather in before Team RWBY came into view, the four girls walking together around the corner from where their dorm building stood. It took her a moment to figure out which girl was which from this distance, mostly because it seemed the girls had all decided to color swap today. Ruby was wearing black and grey, Weiss was wearing red, Blake was wearing either yellow or a bright orange, and Yang was in a deep purple.

'_At least they all have very distinguishable hair._'

Glynda waited patiently while the girls strolled over. At a couple points Ruby decided to do a couple laps around her team, leaving them all batting away at the rose petals floating into their faces, but none of them seemed to mind.

The third time she tried it, though, a black glyph appeared underneath her as she ran and she tripped over herself, becoming a ball of violently explosive petals as she fell and rolled in her semblance. Weiss cackled in delight, and Ruby exited her semblance to let out a betrayed wail that made the other two start laughing too.

It seemed even Weiss had a childish side to her now. Glynda sighed. No doubt this was the influence of the overly excitable team leader. She was fairly certain Ozpin would tell her something along the lines of "Let them be children while they still can", and she strove very hard to dismiss her judgemental disapproval.

She'd liked to joke around and have fun a little bit at their age too.

Subdued, Ruby and her team walked without incident the rest of the way to Glynda.

"Good morning, girls," she greeted them.

"Good morning, Miss Glynda," they all said in unison, sounding amusingly like a group of elementary school children.

"Are you okay, Miss Rose?" she asked with a straight face. "I saw you fall over there."

It was interesting to note the different reactions the girls made. Ruby's cheeks turned bright pink and she pout-glared at her feet, but the smile on her face was unmistakable. Her c—_sister_ laughed loudly, giving Ruby a light punch in the shoulder, and Blake grinned openly, watching the embarrassed team leader. Weiss, on the other hand, kept both eye contact with Glynda and a remarkably straight face, though the corner of her lips _might_ have been turned up a bit. Glynda wasn't familiar enough with the girl's features to be 100% sure.

"Oh yeah, I'm fine," Ruby mumbled at the ground. "I was just _betrayed!_" She did a small hop and turned to glare at Weiss, her tiny fists balled at her side.

Weiss worked very hard to maintain her composure, looking directly at Glynda, but then she made the mistake of glancing at her partner out of the corner of her eyes and let out a quick giggle.

Ruby gave a longer one in response and soon they were both giggling like Peter and Bart used to every time they failed at stealing Glynda's food in the cafeteria all those years ago.

Glynda took a moment to take stock of the girls, see how they were doing. Nidas and Peter had said that Teams JNPR and CRDL were pretty wiped out during their reviews yesterday, still recovering from their Hunts, but these girls seemed totally fine.

They also, Glynda noted, all had very crisp, clean new clothes. Not only had they color swapped, it seemed they style swapped too. Ruby was wearing a black skirt, a grey dress shirt with tile pattern of thin, black fleur-de-lis embroidered on it, and a black suit jacket, while Weiss was wearing dark jeans and a black, tight-fitting tube top under a red faux-leather half-jacket that looked like something out of Barts's anime shows. The other two had also seemingly swapped, Blake in short jean-shorts and a loose, sleeveless yellow blouse with a cut under the arms that gave two ample windows to her ribs, and Yang was wearing a dark violet sleeveless turtleneck and jeans.

Was it Glynda's imagination, or were the freshmen classes getting better and better looking every year? Ever since Coco got here, it seemed like all the new students were fashionistas with model-level looks.

"Shall we?" she asked, gesturing into Beacon Tower.

"Yeah!" Ruby cheered, skipping ahead. Weiss hurriedly shuffled after her, chastising her about how she needed to comport herself more professionally.

"Does Miss Rose know where she's going?" Glynda asked nobody in particular.

Yang snorted. "Nope."

They followed, Glynda hurrying through the winding hallways built like a circular labyrinth to catch up to lead the bumbling child in the right direction.

"Is this supposed to be an elevator?!" Ruby's voice echoed down one of the passageways.

The lucky girl found the right path on her first try. Hmph.

Following the sound of a bossy, bickering voice that could only be one person, Glynda led the other two girls over to Ruby and Weiss, the first of whom was hopping up and down on the gravity Dust platform that served as the elevator up to Ozpin's office, the second of whom was grumpily glaring at her partner off to the side with her arms crossed. Glynda imagined she probably looked similar back in the day whenever Peter made one of his not-jokes about manly men's manliness.

It probably hadn't changed all that much over the years.

"Yes, Miss Rose," Glynda answered. She considered adding something about how if Ruby had simply waited, Glynda would have explained… hmm. She couldn't decide on a good way to word it. No matter. Weiss had been giving the girl a good bit of chastisement anyway, not that Ruby seemed to be particularly cowed by it.

"But where's the buttons?" Ruby asked, looking around the empty, buttonless platform.

"Where _are_ the buttons," Weiss corrected.

"That too."

"No buttons," Glynda said, gently nudging Ruby out of the way so she could stand on the silver plate in the middle of the circle. "Everyone on, please."

As the other three members of the team got on the platform, Glynda expanded her aura through her feet, into the metal pad beneath them. She kept pushing out. Her aura didn't want to flow into the stone of the rest of the platform, nor into the large flow cannisters of gravity Dust set into the bottom. But when it reached the cannister of Dust _she _was attuned to, her aura flowed through and triggered the gravity magic and they began to rise.

The girls all reacted in surprise in their own different ways, the sisters vocally, the other two expressively. Glynda smiled, enjoying her little moment to impress them.

Other than hers, there were eight other gravity Dust cannisters set in the elevator, each attuned to a specific individual: Ozpin and the other professors, Bart, Peter, and Nidas; the other three headmasters, James, Leo, and Theo; and, of course, Qrow. The nine of them were the only people in the world that could get into Ozpin's office sans flying capabilities.

Save Ruby, the girls all seemed a little spooked to be suddenly and quickly rising in an elevator with no walls or even rails, but they were all capable enough that even if they somehow fell off, Glynda wasn't all that worried about them. Below them, the maze of the ground floor of the tower was revealed, the clockwork layout reminiscent of the design of Ozpin's emblem. Massive bronze gears were set in places, giving the impression that the floor actually was some sort of mechanism, though Ozpin had told Glynda it was purely aesthetic. That he just really liked clocks.

"This is soooo cool!" Ruby cheered happily, leaning precariously over the edge of the platform to try to see the underside. Nothing to be concerned about, though-she could fly.

"Indeed," Glynda remarked even as Weiss tugged her teammate back away from the edge.

The elevator rose slowly, the climb to Ozpin's office at the top of the tower taking over a minute and a half. Along the way they passed through holes in the floors beneath Oz's office, three stories that held the professors' offices, living quarters, and the small but state of the art Dust lab and training room that was usually occupied by Glynda and Bart.

"Whoa," Weiss whispered as they passed that last one, only getting a few seconds to take in the shining centrifuges, compressors, refiners, and other machines in the lab.

"Whoooooooooa!" Ruby exclaimed in agreement.

Blake looked over at them with a grin. "Whoa?" she asked.

"Whoa," Yang confirmed.

"Do you girls do this often?" Glynda asked.

"Only when we're out of Jell-o," Yang answered.

"What?" Weiss and Belladonna said together.

They reached the top floor, the lobby in front of Oz's office, and Glynda pulled back on her aura output to bring them to a stop while the platform was within the bounds of the floor. She used her semblance to flip the switch on the dashboard built into the ground in front of the platform, activating the clamps that would hold the elevator in place.

The lobby was a teardrop-shaped room, the round end where the elevator let off and the point where the two large oak double doors opened into Ozpin's office. Soft orange covered the walls sprinkled with yellow and white gears and connecting lines. The curved wall behind them sported a mural showing a distant view of Beacon at midday, blue waves crashing into the island, the towers of the school spearing into a slightly clouded sky. There were pairs of cushioned benches set against the walls near the doors.

"Have a seat, girls," Glynda ordered, gesturing to the benches. "I'll bring you in in just a moment."

As she headed in to make sure Ozpin was ready, she heard Ruby whispering behind her.

"Weiss, look! It looks like your painting!"

"But way better," Weiss muttered back.

"Nuh-uh!"

Glynda smiled at the compelling argument, then pushed the double doors open and closed them behind her.

Ozpin's office was very nice. Teardrop shaped like the lobby, though a bit wider and shorter. Along one of the straight walls was a minibar; a long countertop with an espresso machine and milk steamer, drink shakers, wine bottles, and garnishes. The cabinets and fridges below held milk, cream, liquors, and mixers. The other straight wall sported a massive flatscreen TV and an array of plushy couches set up in front of it. The curved wall was nothing but window looking down on the school grounds and out across the bay to the skyline of Vale City. In the origin of the semicircle formed by the windows sat Ozpin's desk, and at the desk sat Ozpin.

His laptop was out despite the fact that he had a desktop computer in front of him, which told Glynda he was ready or getting ready to move to the couches and play the videos there.

"Good morning, Glynda," Oz greeted her. "Is Team RWBY ready?"

"They are," Glynda nodded.

"Drat."

Glynda's eyebrows raised at that and Ozpin gave her a dry chuckle.

"Help me sync this stupid thing to the TV," he requested, tapping his laptop screen.

Glynda offered a laugh. "I forgot what a technologically challenged old man you are," she teased as she walked over.

"I'm not-! It's just this stupid new BSI syncing feature! I have no idea how to _find_ the room's network, much less connect to it."

With a roll of her eyes, Glynda carried the laptop over to the TV lounge area and got to work. It took almost a minute to get everything set up, but that was because Ozpin hadn't had his laptop on the network to begin with. It would take seconds to connect from now on.

"Hm…" Ozpin intoned as she finished and handed him back his laptop, acting like he was doing some deep, insightful thinking as was his want. He took the laptop back and blinked at the screen blankly for a moment. "Ahem! Thank you, Glynda. Please bring the girls in."

The girls had all grouped up together around one bench, which said a lot about them. There were two benches on each wall, each capable of seating two people. The team could have spread out, one member per bench, or everyone sitting along one wall as Glynda still remembered her team doing. Instead, only Ruby and Weiss were sitting on a bench together. Yang was standing by her sister, a hand on the younger girl's head, slowly and absent-mindedly rocking it back and forth like a grandfather clock while Ruby jabbered to her partner. Blake was leaning against the wall next to her own partner, the two of them listening to Ruby and laughing together at whatever she'd just said.

"... so then _logically_ we can assume that the King Taijitu's greatest weakness is Jell-o!" Ruby declared.

"Team RWBY," Glynda announced herself to the distracted girls.

"Ohthankgoodness," Weiss exhaled, quickly standing. "Thank you for saving what little of my brain function survived this conversation, Professor."

"Some Jell-o will fix your brain right up," Yang told her, stretching her arms out wide and not-so-subtly wrapping one around her partner's waist. Blake raised a bemused eyebrow at her, and Yang winked back at her.

"Come on in," Glynda told them, pulling the doors wider and biting back a smile at these antics. "We're ready for you."

"Wooho-!" Miss Rose cheered before collapsing-and/or-exploding into a shroud of petals and rushing through the door so fast Glynda's brain took a delayed second to figure out what strange breeze just blew her hair back.

She heard Oz in the room behind her exclaim, "Oh! Hello, Ru-okay, can we stop getting roses all over my-thank you."

Glynda let the other three in and turned to find…

There were rose petals _all over_ the TV lounge, carpeting the tiled floor, the couches, the coffee table.

"Miss Rose! What on Remnant possessed you to do this?"

Ruby gave Glynda a grumpy little pout at the chastisement. "I'm excited!"

'_Oh, well I guess it's fine then.'_

"It's fine, Glynda," Oz told her, gesturing for everyone to sit down. "It smells nice."

"And they disappear in a couple hours!" Ruby chirped. "No cleaning necessary!"

"If only you realized your laundry isn't the same," Weiss muttered with a tiny grin.

"Hmehhh!" her partner whined back at her, not disputing the claim.

The TV screen showed the paused image of the forest when Glynda had turned on the camera after landing, streams of early morning light piercing down through the canopy of leaves above and kaleidoscoping across the undergrowth. There were several lines of orange segmenting the scrubber at the bottom where Glynda had marked the moments she wanted to go over with the team.

Ozpin and Glynda sat together on the loveseat while Team RWBY all got situated on the four seater, out of order. The two sisters sat next to each other in the middle, with their introvert partners on the outside.

"Alright," Ozpin stated, bringing everyone into focus. Hopefully. "Glynda, would you like to start?" he asked.

"Ahem! Of course." Glynda stood a bit to lean across and handed… Ruby… the binder she had prepared for the team. "Firstly, this is your Mission Binder. You _should have _gotten it _days_ ago, but…" Glynda spared a glance at Ozpin, who was frowning at her admonishingly in that very grandpa way he had. "... well, no matter, here it is." Ruby reached out and grabbed the binder excitedly, childish silver eyes wide, but Glynda kept a firm grip on it until the girl met her eyes. "_Don't_ lose it," Glynda told her sternly.

Ruby gulped and nodded at her quickly. "I won't!" she squeaked.

In all honesty, it wouldn't be bad if she did. All the professors had copies of the teams' files, and they were stored on the cloudslate. A new copy could be printed at any time should the team leaders ever misplace their Mission Binders. But it was a matter of teaching organization and responsibility!

"Mm," Glynda replied, releasing the binder. Ruby bounced back to her spot on the couch and eagerly opened the binder, her teammates all leaning in to inspect it with her.

"Heehee, Team RWBY," the girl giggled, pointing at the team name printed on the cover page.

'_This girl is supposed to host a goddess?'_ Glynda sighed to herself. There was no way that made sense, but… she'd thought the same about her mother too.

This Goddess of Light had very deranged standards.

"Use this binder to keep track of all your mission rubrics and combat writeups that you gather over your years here. And keep them in chronological order so you can easily see the progress you make."

Weiss seemed incredibly happy with the binder, which amused Glynda. She'd been the same. "Are these from Professor Rustheart?" she asked as her partner flipped through the first few pages that held the writeups from the girls duels over the past weeks.

"Indeed."

Blake leaned further in to read the pages and squinted. "I… can't really read his handwriting…"

Glynda buried her face in her hands with a groan.

"Ahem!" Ozpin said in place of the laugh Glynda suspected he was holding back. "Yes, well you also have your rubric from Friday's Hunt. Professor Goodwitch would like to go over it with you now."

Ruby flipped a few more pages fast enough that Glynda was worried they might tear. "Aha! 'First Hunt'!" she announced, smacking a tiny index finger down on the page.

"_SIXTY-FOUR?!" _Weiss shrieked. Then her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth, suddenly self-conscious at the noise she just let out, but then they quickly flicked back to the grade total at the bottom of the sheet, her eyebrows doing subtle dances between emotions that Glynda couldn't quite place. Anger, disappointment, shame, maybe?

"Out of eighty, Miss Schnee," Glynda informed and reassured her.

The slim girl deflated a bit. "Oh. Alright. That's, what, an _eighty_ percent?" She sneered the number out like it was the worst insult she'd ever had hurled at her.

Glynda quickly did the mental math herself and…

"Yes."

Weiss tensed right back up.

"Hey, eighty's pretty good!" Yang exclaimed happily. She gave her sister a one-armed sideways hug with the words while Ruby wiggled her shoulders and hips back and forth… in some sort of strange display of happiness?

"It most _certainly_ is not!" the heiress huffed back.

"For our _first _Hunt?" Yang said. "Heck yeah it is!"

Weiss's eyes went wide and she looked at her partner, her expression saying 'Are you hearing this?'

In response, Ruby smiled. "An eighty is eighty points better than a zero!"

Weiss's face went blank and she blinked twice, then looked across the couch at Blake. "Are _you_ fine with an eighty?" she demanded.

Glynda noticed the bow hiding Blake's cat ears twitch slightly. "I… I dunno?" The girl turned to Glynda and Ozpin. "Is an eighty okay?"

"Very much so," Oz answered. "You all performed very well, and have some things to work on, as expected." He gave Weiss a pointed look. "You're _student_ huntresses, not professional huntresses. The reason you're _here _is to learn and improve."

Weiss cowed a bit. "Okay…" Then her default haughty tone came back. "Was this graded on a curve?" she asked Glynda.

That made Glynda snort out a small laugh. "Four teams aren't enough data points to create a very good bell curve, Miss Schnee."

The girl's shoulders slumped again. "Oh. Right."

"What's the _highest_ a team's gotten on their first Hunt?" Ruby asked. Her eyes were wide and excited. She wasn't asking to find something to compare to, she just… what, really wanted to hear about other teams being exceptional?

"Hm. I believe it was a sixty-eight out of eighty, so... an eighty-six perc—"

"Oh, we didn't do too bad then," Weiss whispered to herself with an air of revelation and relief like she hadn't believed it the one thousand times her teammates and professors had _just_ told her that.

"Mm," Ozpin agreed.

The eighty-six… That had been Team STRQ. They'd been almost as good in combat as these girls, but better communicators, from what Glynda remembered of the younger team bragging in the cafeteria (mostly Tai), and the Branwens both already had a mission oriented mindset so they never let their professor/civilian get attacked.

That group had come in with less raw talent and power than this one, but there was less conflict between them. On the battlefield, at least. Lady knows they had their issues off of it. It didn't help that these girls were all so slightly cracked, each carrying their own traumas.

Glynda had raised concerns about how broken these four were to Ozpin, but he'd been undeterred.

'_Each on their own, broken, perhaps,'_ he'd said, '_but together the pieces could make something strong and beautiful.'_

Glynda was much one for spirituality or philosophy, but she trusted Ozpin. He had _centuries_ of experience on her, after all.

"Who was the team?" Ruby's voice jarred her from her thoughts.

Glynda made sure not to even glance at Ozpin, in case that itself said too much. If he wasn't going to tell them, she wouldn't either.

"Not important," Oz declared, "because we're here to discuss _you_. Let's start with the scores Professor Goodwitch gave you on the different aspects of your Hunt."

Glynda had spent enough time and thought on the numbers that she had them memorized.

Communication - 14 / 20

Combat - 24 / 20

Objective - 12 / 20

Efficiency - 14 / 20

Ruby scooted the binder to rest on her and her sister's leg so Blake could read more easily and all four girls bent over to do as Ozpin said. Three of them all spoke at once.

"The heck?! Do we, like, suck at talking or something?" Yang said.

"What do Objective and Efficiency mean?" Weiss asked.

"I think you miscounted on this Combat score, Professor," Ruby told her, looking up to meet her eyes.

Blake, unsurprisingly, stayed quiet.

Glynda caught all the various, simultaneous questions, but she opted to wait and let the girls realize they needed to ask one at a time.

The silence that followed stretched a beat more than Glynda felt it should have.

"Professor?" Weiss finally prompted.

"Yes?"

"What do Objective and Efficiency mean?"

After taking a moment to smooth her skirt, Glynda assumed her 'Professor voice' an answered, "Objective is just that: how well you girls both focused on and achieved the objective you were given, which in this case was to protect me, your… 'useless civilian'—" she smiled a little "—and get to the relic point.

"Efficiency is simply how well you girls used your time and resources and skills."

As she spoke, Weiss pulled a pen out of her clutch and tugged the binder closer to herself to write down some notes.

'_Good girl.'_

"What did we do wrong on those?" Blake asked.

"The things that _need improvement_," Glynda stressed, "for your Objective score were, well, the obvious one of letting your useless civilian get jumped by a Stalker—"

"Oof," Yang breathed with a self conscious smile.

"Mm. Additionally, when you girls jumped into the canyon to fight the Nevermores, you left your useless civilian alone at the top of a cliff."

Weiss hissed out a long breath, her expression a subdued look of disappointment.

Glynda could offer placations and platitudes, but shame and disappointment in oneself could be powerful motivators, and Team RWBY definitely needed to learn to focus more on protecting their charge.

"And Efficiency?" Blake asked.

"You girls made decent time. You stopped to talk about formation a bit too much and too long, and a lot of time was wasted after Miss Rose so heroically concussed herself."

Ruby let out a groan and buried her face in her hands, prompting her sister to laugh and wrap an arm around her shoulders to give her a shake.

Glynda smiled at the small girl. "You did get some points back for making good use of everyone's skillsets, though. And Miss Belladonna, you did a great job navigating to the relic point."

The faunus girl gave her a small smile and a soft "Thanks" in reply.

"And now that you girls have figured out a couple escort formations and your roles in them, you should hopefully improve quickly at this aspect in the future."

Ruby bounced in her seat suddenly, startling both her teammates and Glynda. "Gasp! We should name our formations!" Weiss sighed and rolled her eyes, but her animated partner was undeterred. "We could name them after… um, song names! Or, like, animals! Or… video games!"

It was difficult to suppress her laugh when Glynda saw the tired expressions on the two non-sisters' faces, but she kept her calm professor composure intact. "I'll leave that to your discretion as a team. Moving on to the other points, though—"

"Combat!" Yang cheered.

"Let's save that for last," Glynda suggested.

"Aw," Ruby pouted.

Weiss gave her partner a light elbow. "So Communication," she surmised.

"Right," Glynda said. "There was a _lot_ of arguing between all of you." Weiss and Yang both opened their mouths-presumably to argue with _her_, ironically—but Glynda raised a hand to silence them before continuing. "Now understand that I do not just mean that there were disagreements on how to handle situations. Those are, of course, natural. However, there were a lot of squabbles that were simply personal in nature, and those have no place out in a Hunt when there are people's lives in your hands." All four of the girls expressed various forms of dejection at her words, but Glynda was not moved to pull her punches here. Harsh criticism now would help them fix things later.

Ozpin also decided to step in. "Also, it is important to realize that while disagreeing on how to handle situations is normal—_good_, even—, the middle of a fight is not the place to discuss it. Yang and Ruby, you two had a bickering match while being divebombed by _two Nevermores_."

"I—" Yang started, her hackles rising.

"No," Ozpin said sternly, raising a palm to her. "I heard everything and can infer a good deal more. I understand your reasons, but that was not the time or place for a discussion. You needed to listen to your teammate's call and go with the plan."

Ruby gave a smug little grin and gave her sister a tiny poke in the rib cage, which made Yang lightly slap her hand away and playfully bite at her face.

"That is not to say that your team leader is a dictator," Ozpin said.

"I'm not a whatnow?" Ruby replied.

Ozpin focused on making eye contact with the other girls as he continued. "You can and _should_ all make calls out in the field, not just your team leader."

"What?!" Ruby squeaked. "No, don't listen to him, team! He's trying to deceive you! I am your one true ruler!"

"Shush!" Weiss hissed at her.

"Okie," Ruby cowed.

Ozpin gave a pointed 'Ahem!' at Ruby and continued. "You all will have different perspectives and experiences that will lend to your judgements being better in different situations. Part of what I hope you will learn together in the next four years is what situations you each excel at, so when you are in situations that require quick action and one of you makes a call, all of you trust it."

"Already on it, sir!" Ruby chirped. "I listen to Yang on everything food" —Yang rolled her eyes with a smile— "and Weiss on everything about homework or fashion" —Weiss looked very pleased at that— "and Blake on everything… um… Blake, you don't really talk much, do you?"

Blake shrugged lightly and ducked her head down.

"Not… quite what I meant," Ozpin said slowly with an easy smile.

"Perhaps you could learn to listen to Miss Belladonna on the benefits of staying thoughtful and quiet," Glynda suggested to the young team leader.

"Kek. How am I supposed to _listen_ to somebody being quiet?"

Glynda blinked. "Quietly."

Ruby's cheeks lit up, but before she could sputter out a reply, her partner pinched her arm.

"We'll work on it, sir, ma'am."

Glynda nodded and let Ozpin continue. "Of course. I saw you all improve even over the course of this Hunt. Learn to trust each other, learn each others strengths and weaknesses. You are all incredibly talented, powerful, and smart. If you can work together as a team, I have no doubt you girls will become the best huntress team the world has ever seen."

Glynda wasn't herself one for flowery compliments like this, but Ozpin had his style and she'd respect it. Ruby beamed at the praise, Yang leaned back against the couch smugly, Blake scrunched her eyebrows together in thought, and Weiss straightened her back and balled her fists in her lap, looking determined.

"Which brings us to the final section…" Oz trailed off, gesturing to Glynda, who finished his sentence.

"Combat."

"Woohooooo!" Ruby cheered, bouncing again and jostling everyone on the couch. The binder almost fell to the floor but for Weiss quickly catching it with an impatient huff. "Did you give us extra points because we're, like, super duper awesome?" Ruby asked.

"Well… yes," Glynda admitted.

"Haha!" Ruby cheered again, raising her hands to give her teammates high-fives. Yang returned it with enough strength to knock the poor girl into her partner, and Blake reached over to give a light followup.

Ruby turned to Weiss, waiting for a high-five, but Weiss just glared at her grumpily.

Ruby waved her hand back and forth a bit as encouragement.

Ever so slowly, Weiss raised a hand and… poked Ruby's palm with a pointy index finger.

This was evidently a satisfactory reciprocation, because Ruby (and then the rest of the team) all turned back to Glynda. She waited a moment, looking between the four girls to see if they were actually done, then continued.

"You girls vastly surpassed all of the metrics for a starting team's combat capabilities, and save for a couple hiccups you all were incredibly coordinated. Now I was wearing a camera on my lapel and managed to get a good recording of pretty much all of it save for Miss Roses escapade through the forest when she drew the Nevermores away, and the headmaster and I wanted to go through some of the footage to point some things out to you that you should work on."

Ruby leaned forward excitedly and rubbed her hands together. "Ooooh," she cooed, "tactical feedback!"

"Mm. Quite." Glynda gestured to Ozpin to start the video. "Now, against the Lesser Pack at the river…"

Twenty-eight minutes later, Glynda and Ozpin had exhausted all the points they had wanted to make. It left Glynda with the beginnings of a headache; Ruby wanted to stop the conversation every time a team maneuver was brought up to give it a name, Weiss spent half her time bickering with her partner and the other half asking Glynda and Ozpin 'If we fix this, would we get all eighty points next time?', Blake was reluctant—to the point of almost refusing—to engage in any discussion that involved improving her combat skill, and Yang didn't like taking any criticism at all, or listening to anybody criticize her little sister.

This career and lifestyle tended to attract more eccentric individuals, often exacerbated by Semblance-Induced Personality Shifts, so Glynda was used to dealing with difficult students. She'd had many that were far worse than any of the members of Team RWBY, but this team might be the most difficult to deal with when added up.

"Well that's all we've got, girls," Ozpin announced. He looked over at Glynda. "Unless you had anything to add?"

"Not much. You girls did well. Think about and practice the things we've talked about. Have you all finished your homework for my class tomorrow?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yep!"

Glynda wasn't surprised at Weiss' response, but Ruby's… She raised eyebrow at the girl.

"What?!" she squeaked. "I did it yesterday!..." Her eyes darted to the floor and she mumbled, "... Weiss made me."

A brief, involuntary laugh slipped out of Glynda, but by the time Ruby looked back up at her with a grin, her expression was set back to Stern Professor. She looked over at the other two sheepish girls. "Make sure you have the assignment done for tomorrow."

"We will," Blake agreed heavily.

"Hopefully Weiss helps _us_ too, and doesn't just play favorites with Ruby," Yang grumbled with a teasing smile.

"I _told_ you two to do it with us!" Weiss shot back, not picking up that the jab was a joke.

"But I wanted to read!" Blake protested.

"Yeah," Yang agreed, "and I wanted to… not do homework." She glanced sideways at the two professors, wide-eyed, and Glynda crossed her arms and frowned at the girl. The disapproval just made the buffoon bust out laughing though.

'_Children,'_ Glynda sighed to herself.

"Well, if that's everything," Oz said, "Glynda will see y—"

Ruby's hand shot up. "Wait! I have a question!"

Ozpin's eyebrows arched up in amusement. "Yes?"

Ruby took in one long, deep breath, like she was preparing to spew out everything in one go. "Okay, so I'm gonna go in to fix Crescent Rose today, but Weiss and I were looking to rebuild the blade and bladewell with upgrades to add Dust ports and stuff and I was wondering if we have the equipment and stuff for that and maybe if someone could help us actually put it together maybe?"

Ozpin gave a hearty chuckle. "Equipment? Most likely, unless you need something very particular. Resources, probably, and if we don't you can ask Master Onyx to order whatever you need. Unless it's obscenely expensive, he'd likely approve of it. He'd also be the one to ask for help with any forging or construction you'd be doing."

"Master Onyx?" Ruby asked.

"Indeed. He's a master weaponsmith. Beacon graduate, gave up Hunting to pursue weaponcrafting many years ago. I've more or less put him in charge of the workshop. Big man. Ram horns. You can't miss him, and he'll be very happy to help."

Out of the corner of her eye, Glynda noticed Blake wring her hands together and glance at Weiss, who looked impassive.

"Sweet! Thanks!"

"Now then—"

Ruby's hand shot up again. "Wait! I have another question!"

Ozpin's lips pressed together, though Glynda could see the faint upturns at the corners. He gestured for Ruby to continue.

"Are we allowed to go train and spar and stuff in the Battle Center on our own time, or is can we only do it during Professor Rustyboi's class?"

"Ah, yes, of course you can. Although we do require that first years have professor supervision. Just to make sure you don't kill or horribly maim each other by accident."

"Naturally," Blake drawled with a smile.

"If you send a message to BeaconProfs we'll all see it and more likely than not at least one of us will be available to come down for you."

"Okay, awesome!" Ruby said happily.

"Any _more_ questions?" Ozpin asked, looking pointedly at Ruby.

Undeterred, Ruby cupped her chin between an index finger and thumb and said, "Hmmm… I don't think so. Oh! Can you tell the cafeteria people that they should stop making oatmeal cookies 'cause nobody likes that fake cookie garbage and make snickerdoodles instead?"

"Ruby!" Weiss huffed while Yang erupted with more laughter.

A pang reminded Glynda of her quietly building headache, and it took everything she had not to roll her eyes, and Ozpin was clearly having similar difficulties with not following Yang's lead. "... I'll go talk to the, ah… 'cafeteria people' about it," he hedged.

"Niccce! Well, that's all I got! Thanks, Professor!" Ruby turned and marched comedically towards the door, her team following behind her.

Well… most of her team. Yang stayed there in front of them, eyes on her feet, one hand scratching at the back of her head.

"Did _you_ have a question, Miss Xiao-Long?" Glynda asked.

"Um… maybe. I think so. Um…" She glanced back and met Weiss' eyes and they shared a look that made it clear they both knew what she was going to ask, and that Weiss disapproved. Then Weiss turned and corralled her other two teammates back out into the lobby, despite their (very squeaky, in Ruby's case) protests.

"So… yesterday," Yang started, "I—we—um, kinda ran into a girl. A homeless girl. And, uh, she's got aura. And a semblance. Some sort of mind illusion projection thingy, or whatever… And she said she's decent in a fight! So, uh… I dunno, I kinda wanted to help her not be homeless anymore or whatever, so I told her I'd ask to see if maybe she could, like, do a tryout or something to see if she could get into Beacon next year. Oh, and she's sixteen. So, like, the timing and age stuff and things would make sense. And. Um. Yeah."

The girl's nervous rambling finally over, Glynda glanced over at Ozpin to gauge his reaction. He looked thoughtful, quiet, serious. The usual, really, though his eyebrows were creased together slightly more than usual. Glynda herself was concerned that there was just a child wandering around on the streets alone, but… she'd let Ozpin take the lead first.

"I commend you for your empathy and wanting to help those in need," he started.

"O-oh. Yeah, okay, that's fine," Yang mumbled like she hadn't really heard what he said. She turned and started to walk away, assuming the answer would be 'no', apparently.

"One moment, Yang," Ozpin said gently but firmly, prompting the girl to turn back around, confused. "I was not being dismissive."

"Oh."

Oz rubbed his chin for a moment before continuing. "Tryouts are not something I do very often, but I _have_ done them before."

"You have?" Yang asked, perking up with hope.

"Indeed. That's how your mother and uncle got into Beacon, actually."

"It-it was?" Yang stammered, deflating back down. "I… didn't know that." Her tone was one of pure dejection. "Why… I should have known that… I guess I never realized that you guys, like, knew my mom, huh?"

There was an awkward stretch of silence and Glynda knew Ozpin reached the same conclusion she had about what was going through this young girl's head right now. Glynda wasn't qualified or eager to help someone deal with their mother leaving them, and it appeared Ozpin wasn't either, because he talked right around the issue.

"We did indeed. Do you think, based on yourself and your classmates, that this girl has the skills and selfless spirit to be a huntress?"

"Huh? Oh, right." Yang scratched the back of her head as she returned her focus back to the topic at hand. "Um. I'm not sure. I haven't really seen her fight. As for the selfless spirit, she's at least nicer than Cardin, so… there's that."

Glynda snorted a laugh at that and quickly covered her mouth, though Oz shot a disapproving frown her way regardless. She hadn't been happy with the Winchester boy's admission here, but the school needed funding, especially if Oz wanted to continue to be able to give out things like full scholarships to Ruby and Nora and Ren. Between the generous donations they'd received from Winchester Arms and the Schnee Dust Company this year, they'd be able to completely afford the renovations to the Battle Center this winter and then some.

Money shouldn't be something that let people like Cardin into Beacon, but alas, the world was not perfect, and Ozpin knew that better than anyone.

"Hm," Ozpin intoned, turning back to Yang. "Well if you can give me a confident 'yes' that you believe she's Beacon material, then I'd be happy to give her a private tryout in December when we start to look at next year's admissions."

Yang blinked. "Um… alright. I guess I could, like, spar with her, see how good she is."

Ozpin gave a small nod. "What was this girl's name?"

"Oh, Emerald. Uh, Emerald Something. I don't think I ever got a last name."

"And is she aware that there are shelters and youth homes she could go to?" Glynda asked, feeling the need to bring this up.

"Yeah," Yang answered. "She said she'd gone to them before but they try to send her home 'cause her parents are still, like, alive and here. But she doesn't like them, so… yeah. She'd rather live on the street than at home, I guess."

This sounded like something the police needed to get involved in. The look Ozpin gave her told Glynda he was thinking along the same lines.

Well, they had a first name. At least, hopefully it was her real first name. There might be missing persons cases for an 'Emerald' that would help them narrow down where to find this poor girl and help her and see what was going on with her parents. It wouldn't do to tell Yang this, though; if the girl got any hint that Beacon was working with the authorities about this, she might not show up.

"Well, if you give me that recommendation, Yang, I'll happily set up a time for her to come in," Ozpin said in his typical grandfatherly tone.

Yang's response was nervous, awkward, and relieved, all in one. She let out a puff of air and then slowly punched a thumbs up at the two adults. "Cooool… Thanks, Brofessor… Iiiii'ma go now… 'Kay." She turned and walked out, overly-casually sticking her thumbs in her pocket.

Glynda and Ozpin shared a look between them, then Glynda followed her student out.

Yang's teammates seemed to notice how off she was. Weiss just tilted her head and squinted quizzically, but Blake was waiting closest to the door and quickly moved to Yang's side to put a hand on her back and ask, "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, thanks." She glanced at Weiss and gave her a small smile and nod. "Ozpin sa—"

A swirl of petals slammed into her and turned into Ruby, wrapping her much bigger sister in a hug. "Hi!" she chirped.

"Oh, you're approaching me?!" Yang said in a gruff, cartoonish voice. "Are you here for some Ursa hugs?!" She scooped up the little Ruby and squeezed her back, the poor girl's feet left dangling inches from the ground as she giggle-grunted for air.

"N-Yang! Ack! Sto-heehehe! Stop it! Yang-uh! Ahahahha!"

With that, Yang unceremoniously started walking back down to the elevator, carrying a swinging, kicking, giggling huntress in front of her. Ruby interspersed her kicks with light headbutts to Yang's nose that had absolutely no avail, which just made her giggle more. Blake and Weiss rolled their eyes and followed like this was a perfectly normal occurrence.

"I'll have you flogged for insubstantiation!" Ruby cried.

"You mean insub_ord_ination?" Weiss asked.

"Ruby, do you even know what 'flogging' is?" Blake asked her.

Ruby paused her wiggling to frown thoughtfully. "It's when someone hits you with a flag, right?"

Glynda couldn't help joining in on the laughter.

"Yeah, that's it," Blake agreed.

When they all situated themselves on the platform, Glynda released the clamp and started to let them down. Going down still required her to pour aura into the platform. Gravity by itself would send them plummeting down, so she had to use the gravity Dust to push against it enough to slow them down, but not so much as stop them. Easy as breathing now, though control like this was hard when she'd been a student. Aura was hard to control enough to output an even flow for the unexperienced.

Ruby quit her kicking in Yang's hold to crane her neck and look around as they descended back down to the lobby.

"How much you want to bet I can beat this thing to the bottom?" she asked.

"Why on Remnant would I take that bet?" Yang asked her.

"I dunno, 'cause yer dumb? Ack!"

She squealed and coughed and laughed as Yang squeezed her harder.

"What did Ozpin say?" Weiss asked.

Yang looked over and a silent conversation passed between them. "He said maybe, if I can vouch for her."

"For who?" Ruby asked with a few small kicks.

"Yer face," Yang answered.

Ruby scrunched up her nose and leaned back to get a good view of Yang. "You're vouching for my face?"

"I said '_if'_."

"You're _not_ vouching for my face?" Ruby asked, offended.

"Not sure I like it yet."

"You've seen it for almost sixteen years!"

"Guess I'm dumb."

"Hmph!"

The elevator reached the base at the bottom and clicked loudly into place.

"Alright, girls, good meeting—" '_for the most part,' _she thought to herself "—and good Hunt. Enjoy the rest of the weekend and be ready for class tomorrow." Was there anything she was missing? Some piece of adult or professor advice or instruction that was slipping her mind? "... Don't be late."

She'd said it because it was just a thing professors were supposed to say, but when the girls all gave varying degrees of flustered response, it reminded her of their late arrivals on their first day of class.

'_Good job, Glynda. You've got this professor thing down.'_

Team RWBY all gave their goodbyes in their various ways, Yang casually, Blake quietly, Weiss formally, and Ruby breathlessly because she was still being crushed by her sister for Light knows what reason. With them off to their dorm rooms, Glynda headed back up to Ozpin.

He was still sitting in the love seat, staring off into space, thinking about… whatever it was a man that was millenia old and remembered a time when gods and Grimm first arrived and walked on Remnant thought about. Hopefully it was the same thing on Glynda's mind right now.

"I have some concerns that Tai hasn't helped his daughter cope with Raven leaving very well," she said firmly.

Ozpin stirred from wherever his head was at and blinked at Glynda heavily. "He's doing the best he can. The Branwens proved to be excellent huntsmen and awful parents, and Summer…"

Summer had been a great person and parent. She was gone now because of several reasons—her hero complex, her desire to get Raven to come back, her refusal to use Aurora's power, and chief among them that she hadn't trusted Ozpin that Salem was dead. She'd been right, technically, though Glynda wasn't sure finding out that truth was worth her life. And she knew Tai felt the same, and was certain Ruby and Yang would too, if they knew.

_When _they knew. It would surely come up when Ozpin felt it was time to tell Ruby what she is.

It wasn't worth arguing about though. It would just turn into Glynda accusing Ozpin of making a stupid mistake lying about Salem and he would just recite all the reasons he'd thought he'd been right to. They'd get nowhere.

"And this Emerald girl?" she asked instead.

Ozpin shrugged and stood, striding back to his desk. "We'll give her a tryout if Yang is confident she belongs here. And we'll have Child Care Services here to get her home afterwards."

"Should we not look into her parents, make sure it's a safe home to go back to?" Glynda worried. Children often overreacted to things, especially where parents were concerned, but not always, and there was always _something_ there for them to complain about. And if the 'complaining' was a girl running away from home to live in the streets, there was likely something significantly wrong going on in that home.

Ozpin sighed and slumped into his chair. "We _are_ a bit busy, Glynda, and proving and litigating domestic abuse cases is incredibly time consuming and difficult."

Glynda crossed her arms and frowned at her mentor.

"And victim and main witness is living out on the street and likely not willing to provide testimony," he added.

Glynda maintained her glare.

Ozpin waved a hand tiredly. "We can give the case to the police and _encourage_ them to launch a thorough investigation."

That would help. The police, at least in Vale and Atlas, tended to defer to huntsmen. Ozpin's 'encouragement' would make them take this potential domestic abuse case seriously, something they didn't do more often than not.

"Should we have them talk to Miss Xiao-Long?"

"No," Ozpin said quickly. "It would make her uncomfortable and feel like we betrayed her trust, and she might tip off the girl. Besides, I think she needs to feel like she's helping this Emerald."

True. Glynda couldn't imagine abusive parents sat any better with Yang than absentee ones.

"Now I need to do the review with Team KORL, then we'll get Nidas and finally go clear out that cave," Ozpin said, standing back up and pulling out a scroll. "It needs to be safe for whenever it is time for Ruby to claim Aurora's light."

"Assuming she wants to," Glynda amended for him. It was the girl's own mother that had decided to put it there.

"Assuming she wants to," Oz agreed.

Glynda would have preferred having Peter or Bart over Nidas—not because Nidas was bad in a fight (he was quite good, in fact), but because Pete and Bart were her teammates and she was more used to working with them. Unfortunately, Pete was visiting family in southern Vale and wouldn't be back until tomorrow morning and Bart had decided to stay because they always needed a professor on campus and he said he'd rather work with the police to find Black than dive into an Elder Hive on a Sunday.

Which was fair.

"I'll see you at the airstrip in an hour," Ozpin said.

A little over two hours later, Glynda, Ozpin, and Nidas were standing above the hole at the top of the cave that held the statue of Aurora, the pearlescent marble woman in full view and reflecting light more than marble ought to. And within the lantern hanging from her hand was the shining light of Aurora's power that Summer had decided to lock away years ago to silence the goddess in her head.

Behind them, the Chariot that brought them here hovered twenty feet above the canopy, the force from the gravity engines bending the boughs beneath. Ozpin had told them to stay airborne for safety's sake.

"So this is where Big Magical Light Lady landed, huh," Nidas remarked. This was his first time out here, his first time seeing the statue. "After she, uh, crashed through the moon?" He had a wry grin on his face like he thought this was a strange joke.

"Yes," Ozpin replied. "Though I daresay it's much prettier now."

"How are we doing this?" Glynda asked. She was certain Ozpin would use his semblance here, but wasn't sure how.

"You gonna 'split the timelines' or whatever?" Nidas asked.

"I already have."

ɑ

"Was I supposed to feel something?" Nidas asked, patting himself like he was trying to find his car keys in a pocket.

"No," Ozpin answered with a wry smile. "I'm running only a little bit of Aura in this branch. Let's just jump down and see what's what. I'll have us wait in the other and we can change our plans accordingly."

"There are webs on the ceiling in this corner," Glynda said, pointing to the southwest side of the hill. "Nidas, find targets as soon as we drop."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, defaulting to the student-professor relationship they were both familiar with despite them technically being peers now. He pulled out the single-edged scimitars (one side bladed, the other a thin metal blade well set with gears and catches holding the bowstring) strapped to his back, gave one a twirl, and slammed the ends of the hilts together. Mechanisms crunched and whirred as the swords affixed to each other, then the gears that divided the blades into thirds rotated the blades inward, converted a dual-bladed sword into a longbow. There was a *_twang!*_ as the bowstrings on both ends were hot with a burst of pressure and connected. Blue lights lit up on the string-connecting device and in the connected halves of the pommel, hard-light Dust mechanisms. Nidas' right hand had a peculiar mechanical glove on and he tapped his index and middle fingers together twice and blue circles appeared at their tips as well. He reached down to the string connector with those fingers and tugged a bit and an arrow of pure hard-light projected between the string connector and the adjoined pommels. "Ready."

"Kids these days and their overly complicated toys," Glynda muttered with a smile.

"Don't be jelly, Professor," Nidas grinned at her.

"I would never be '_jelly_'," Glynda bristled.

"Alright, children," Ozpin smiled. "You two lead. When I said I only have a little aura right now, I meant it."

"No worries, Professor. I got this."

With that, Nidas tipped over the edge of the skylight and fell in, doing a quick front flip and kicking his fire Dust boots on to slow his fall as he twisted in the air and released an arrow at something out of view.

Glynda dropped down after him.

She landed with a soft splash, slowing herself with her telekinesis to slow herself before the impact of the thirty foot drop could make her stumble. As soon as her feet touched ground, she sent a focused thread of aura down the inside of her left sleeve, along the line of lightning Dust woven into her clothing. The charge of lightning built in her hand and she held it, letting it charge and bounce between her fingertips as she wheeled around to where Nidas had been shooting.

There.

In the darkness, red eyes were shining, one set of eight much bigger than all the others, rearing back to jump.

Glynda let loose the lightning in her hand—not throwing it or pushing it, but just letting it go with a bit of guidance. The bolt crackled across the cavern faster than a blink and detonated with a thunderous crash in the Elder Weaver's face. The creature let out a hideous screech and reeled, the impact shaking it and the web that it and all its little hivelings clung to.

Still standing, though it looked like a couple of its eyes went dark. Probably gorey smears now, though it was impossible to tell with it lurking in the dark.

Nidas reached down to his belt and pulled out a small crystal of fire Dust that he pinched between his two arrow-drawing fingers and drew his bow again. The arrow that formed was compacted flame with lines of blue hard-light running parallel to the shaft an inch away and pans of hard-light hexagoning conically just beyond the arrowhead. He let the arrow loose with a quick flick that Glynda wasn't even sure he'd aimed, but it exploded perfectly above the Elder, right between its four front legs.

The resulting explosion burned the underside of the upside-down Elder and incinerated a couple of the smaller Weavers nearby, but most importantly it burned up the webbing the Elder was sticking to. It tipped, its front six legs scrabbling at air as its back two tried to maintain a grip on the webbing that had survived the explosion. The full weight of the Elder Weaver was too much on that small of an area, though, and the web stretched to the point it couldn't anymore and ripped, sending the massive monster falling on its back with a ground-shaking thud.

Nidas immediately rushed forward, trying to close the forty foot distance to the creature to do some damage, but the other broodlings were crawling out or dropping down to them now, and were quickly a wall of legs and skittering evil between them and the Elder struggling to flip itself.

With a quick flick of her crop, Glynda sent a wave of fire out in front of her. She bent the flames around Nidas and incinerated most of the smaller Grimm around him. The flames wanted to continue to the curved movement despite her wishes otherwise, and instead of fighting it, Glynda doubled down, pushing the fire in two separate circles. Soon there were two towering tornados of flame tearing through the cave. She pushed one straight ahead to the Elder, clearing a path for Nidas, the other she had spin circles around her student fellow professor to help keep him from getting piled on.

As the flaming cyclone spun around him and to his right side, Nidas shot an ice arrow into one of the bigger Weavers on his left. The frost explosion encased the creature, blades of ice spearing out behind it. Nidas pointed a commanding finger at it and the ice then ruptured, then exploded, spinning blades sent flying out away from him into the ever increasing throng of Grimm racing at them. Several died, and many more were amputated, some losing enough legs that they couldn't properly continue fighting.

A bit of teacher's pride flared in Glynda's chest at her former student's capabilities. He hadn't been able to do that before he came to Beacon. She'd actually taught him herself how to manipulate Dust post-casting.

"Don't focus on killing them!" Ozpin's voice shouted behind her. He was standing underneath the statue-goddess' lantern, peering into the darkness where the Weaver Queen was. "Focus on figuring out where they're coming from!"

Glynda pushed the fire slowing dying fire tornadoes forward, toward the far wall, but knew they'd need more to see. For reasons nobody quite understood, Dust fire burned dimmer but hotter than natural fire, and wasn't a terribly reliably source of light.

Not compared to the crystal of light Dust that Glynda pulled out. She crushed it in her palm and poured aura into it, then flung them out. She willed hundreds of tiny little points of light into existence and sent the floating into the darkness. The tiny sprites of light would have made this area quite beautiful if it weren't for the fact that they illuminated a horde of corrupted arachnid monsters.

There were three massive webs along the far wall, each replete with small to medium sized Weavers. More were crawling out of two cracks in the wall, one from the floor to the ceiling, another running at a diagonal the branched out from the first. There was also one more web on the ceiling, though most of its occupants had dropped down by now.

'_So many.'_

"The fack?!" Nidas yelled, expressing a similar sentiment.

"We need to find all the holes they're crawling out of!" Ozpin ordered.

Were there more? It looked like this was everyth—oh.

"There!" Glynda shouted, pointing and sending some of the blips on light over to illuminate. There was a crack in the floor to the south where it met the wall, and a few Weavers were squeezing through the space and jumping out to join the fight.

Right after that there was a horrible scream, like a cross between a banshee shriek and a six year old gargling toothpaste, and Glynda turned to see that the Elder had somehow gotten itself to the wall and back onto its feet. It launched a wide web out at Nidas, who was still looking at where Glynda had pointed.

He reacted fast, though, spinning his bow and creating a Dust-summoned slash of air that split the web in two and sent the halves floating harmlessly to his sides. One flew in such a way that it started to drape itself onto the statue of Aurora, but when the corrupted black silk came within a foot of the marble it seemed to evaporate into nothingness.

'_Huh.'_

Unfortunately, though he dealt with the web, it was not nearly as easy for Nidas to deal with the throngs of spiders that were now close enough to him to be a problem. Two smaller ones jumped towards him and he sliced one out of the air and punched the other, but then a bigger one jumped on his back. Glynda blasted it off with gravity Dust, but the thing had left webbing on Nidas' back that anchored him to the floor.

Glynda brought the tornados of fire back, both now smaller than some of the spiders they were fighting, to try to clear some space for Nidas and burn the silk off his back.

More started piling in an him in the meantime, biting and swiping at him while he was bound down. He released a burst of gravity Dust magic in a sphere around himself, a simple but effective technique that Glynda had taught him in his first year at Beacon, that pushed everything around him away and snapped enough lines of silk that he could pull himself free of the rest.

There were just so _many_.

"We got what we needed!" Ozpin shouted. "I'm cutting this line!"

A shiver of fear ran down Glynda's spine, even though rationally she knew there was no reason for it. Just the idea that the her of right now would completely cease to exist was… terrifying. But it would be okay. There was another her in another timeline that would never even be aware of the fear she was feeling right now, and she wou—

"Was I supposed to feel something?" Nidas asked, patting himself like he was trying to find his car keys in a pocket.

"No," Ozpin answered with a wry smile. A moment of silence stretched before he spoke again. "We'll be clearing the cave in this line. Be ready for a fight. I'll see how the scouting goes and then we'll go in."

There wasn't much for Glynda to do to prepare, so she just stood there with her arms crossed, tapping her crop against her bicep in a steady rhythm like a grandfather clock.

Nidas, on the other hand, pulled out the single-edged scimitars (one side bladed, the other a thin metal blade well set with gears and catches holding the bowstring) strapped to his back, gave one a twirl, and slammed the ends of the hilts together. Mechanisms crunched and whirred as the swords affixed to each other, then the gears that divided the blades into thirds rotated the blades inward, converted a dual-bladed sword into a longbow. There was a *_twang!*_ as the bowstrings on both ends were hot with a burst of pressure and connected. Blue lights lit up on the string-connecting device and in the connected halves of the pommel, hard-light Dust mechanisms. Nidas' right hand had a peculiar mechanical glove on and he tapped his index and middle fingers together twice and blue circles appeared at their tips as well. He reached down to the string connector with those fingers and tugged a bit and an arrow of pure hard-light projected between the string connector and the adjoined pommels.

"Is it just me, or are there somehow _more_ gears on that thing than there were last week?" Glynda teased her former student.

Nidas smiled and glanced down at his weapon, then at Glynda's riding crop in her hand. "Yeah, I stole them from your stick."

"It is a _crop_, Mister Rustheart, and I _will_ smack you with it."

"Ssshh," Ozpin hissed gently. "Get ready. There are a lot of them. It looks like you were right, Glynda. The Elder is up here." He pointed to a spot on the hill a little ways to the southwest.

Had Glynda said that? She didn't remember saying that. It fit with what she remembered of when she was here last, though.

They waited for another protracted moment. Glynda tapped her crop. Nidas tested his bowstring. Ozpin twirled his cane a couple times, then stuck it into the ground and began getting shards of Dust out from his belt pouches. He placed two slim crystals of earth Dust on opposite sides of his upturned palm and between them a gravity and a fire crystal.

He crushed the Dust and immediately the ground began to rumble.

In the space between where Glynda and Oz stood, violet aether and bright red flames swirled into being together, starting off as pinpricks and expanding rapidly into an impossibly large humanoid form. Rock cracked beneath it and pulled up, slowly encasing the wild eddies of magic. First boots, then legs. As the earth casing went higher, it started to pull chunks of rock from further and further away, until Glynda had to step back as the ground beneath her was broken and yanked from underneath her to complete the final parts of this elemental being's head.

Before her stood a twelve foot tall man made of solid rock, the cracks in between the pieces that made it up all glowing purple or red with the magic inside. It was shaped like it was wearing armor, with a chin guard rising up from a breastplate, ridiculously large pauldrons, and even what appeared was a chainmail skirt, the flowing, cloth-like bit formed by a veil of gravity magic and small pebbles dotting it to give the impression of links of chain.

And at the very top the thing wore a crown. Every other spike in the circle was taller jutted out a bit and curved back, with tongues of flame cresting out behind and above them.

The elemental's eyes glowed an intimidating, unblinking purple. Its face was otherwise featureless, a nostril-less form of a nose and no mouth, making it look almost like a demonic mannequin.

It held its left arm out and closed a fist, and there was another cracking of earth. Pieces flew to its arm and soon it had a broad kite shield, so large it was almost a tower shield, the cracks between the sections glowing violet.

It extended its other arm and chucks of rock flew into it, quickly forming a large sword hilt in its massive hand. The elemental flicked once and suddenly an obscenely large blade of pure flame erupted from the crossguard, wide, straight, pointed, and almost ten feet long.

With that, it struck a battle stance, staring down into the hole they were all gathered around. For a moment, all was silent save for the loud cracking and rumbling sounds passively emanating from the Dust knight.

"... Uh, what?" Nidas finally spoke.

Ozpin picked his cane back up and stuck it in the ground at his feet, both hands resting on the pommel, and straightened his back. "Now when we drop, I'll handle the Elder. Glynda, I need you to cast some light in the room as soon as you land."

Glynda nodded.

"Once the room is lit, you should be able to see the cracks in the wall where the Weavers are pouring out from. There are two on this wall—" he pointed into the west side of the hill "—and one where the floor and the wall meet over there." He pointed to the southern side of the hill.

Glynda idly wondered what they did or were doing in the other timeline to get that intel. Did the fight go well? It was weird to think she might have died and not even know it. Though she was certain Ozpin wouldn't let that happen, even knowing that timeline wasn't going to be permanent.

"Once those are sealed, just focus on clearing out the smaller Weavers in the cave and keep them off my back. I need to see what I have this guy swinging at." He looked up at the massive knight's unmoving, expressionless face.

"So you're directly controlling this thing?" Nidas asked. "It's not autonomous?"

Ozpin chuckled. "No, Nidas. I cannot grant something a consciousness."

"So… this isn't some weird pseudo-god magic shenanigans or like a second semblance or something? It's just… Dust casting?"

Ozpin smiled and nodded.

Nidas looked at the knight, then back at Ozpin. "So theoretically _I_ could learn how to do that?"

"Theoretically," Ozpin agreed. "Though it took me several centuries to get it down myself."

Glynda felt a pang of… well several pangs of several different feelings. Dejection knowing that despite being considered a master Dust caster by the rest of the world, she would never ever be able to come anywhere close to Ozpin's level. Determination seeing something like _this _was _technically_ possible for her to do. And jealously of Ozpin being able to spend eternity mastering Dust casting—and anything he wanted to, really. From the mural on the wall and some of the other things she'd seen, he was a master painter. From the statue beneath them she could surmise he was also a skilled sculptor.

As far as Glynda knew, the only thing Ozpin had no skill in was programming. He told her he had no interest in learning, though had also conceded immediately after that the personalities of any of his future hosts might change that, so he'd probably end up mastering that too.

Glynda knew that it was a lonely and hard existence, but she had a very hard time putting aside her own desire to be immortal.

"Damn it," Nidas muttered. "... Maybe you just suck though."

That made Oz let out a full-bellied laugh. "Perhaps. Now, shall we?" He gestured down the hole with his cane.

With that, the Dust knight dropped down the hole, landing in the pool near the statue of the Lady of Light with a crash. Ozpin followed immediately after, landing on the other side.

Glynda dropped, spun, slowed herself with her semblance, and sent out a shower of white Dust, hundreds of points of light spreading across the southwest section of the cave.

The dozens and dozens of malicious red eyes the light revealed made Glynda partially regret that. Not scary—she had too much experience to be scared at this point—but incredibly creepy. That was an image that would stay with her when she closed her eyes to go to sleep tonight.

She shrugged the feeling away and focused on what she needed to do. She suspended herself where she was, using her semblance on her boots to pseudo-stand in the air, and scanned for the cracks Ozpin had tasked her with sealing. Easy enough, since she knew where to look. The slimy Weavers crawling out of them helped.

She could pinch the cracks shut with earth Dust, but she didn't have quite the range or power with earth as she did with ice.

With precision most huntsmen could only dream of achieving, Glynda used her aura to activate a series of ice Dust threads in her jacket, summoning a sphere of cold magic in one hand. She could just throw these at the cracks, but they were too long to be covered by two blasts. Instead, she flicked her crop, splitting the magic in her hand in two and sending one half as a stream of missiles that arced through the cavern and impacted on the crack between the floor and southern wall.

One hit a stupid spider that skittered in the way, but the rest connected at points along the line and their detonations of ice were enough to cut off the entire entrance, ending the stream of Weavers coming from that direction.

She turned to take care of the cracks in the other wall and…

'_Oh.'_

Something had burned the web on the ceiling of the cave the Elder was lurking on, and as Glynda turned it crashed to the ground. Less than a second later, the Dust knight slammed into it with its shield, strong enough that it was sent rolling into the wall.

Weavers were lunging at the knight, several crawling over it and trying to bite or hack into it, but the stone golem was unperturbed. It lashed out with its sword, the blade of fire expanding and stretching with the motion, and a huge mass of Grimm were incinerated before the hit connected with the Elder, cutting into two of its legs and making it screech. An ugly sound, that, like a cross between a banshee shriek and a six year old gargling toothpaste.

Nidas was splashing about in the pool, blitzing this way and that with his swords to slice up Weavers that were rushing at Ozpin, who looked to be ramping up a big casting with Earth dust while he watched his knight, the dark green magic swirling and swelling between his hands.

Glynda sent her other salvo of missiles at the two branching cracks in the far wall, though she wasn't able to completely freeze shut one of them. Maybe she could have, if she'd focused more on spacing them out to maximize their detonation radius, but she was a bit distracted watching the knight in action. She quickly amended the error, pulling more ice Dust from her skirt and sending the missiles across the cavern, then returned her attention to the knight.

It charged the Elder, slamming into the monster with its shield to pin it against the wall, then started hacking into its face with its fire sword. A few of its eyes popped, black gore erupting out of the sockets as the thing screamed.

A brutal scene, made even more disconcerting when Glynda remembered Ozpin was controlling this thing.

He was actively controlling it, the same way Glynda would control a Dust tornado or whip or storm or missile, right? She should be able to do this, it just required focus and precision of thought. If anything, it should be _easier_ to move Dust around like a human than a tornado because Glynda knew what it felt like to be human, right?

It definitely wasn't going to be that simple, but it helped Glynda to simplify things like that to force herself into overcoming the obstacle. If it was simple, there was no reason she couldn't get it.

Another Elder scream pulled her out of her considerations. The thing had scrabbled until it was able to get its feet against the wall the knight was pinning it to and pushed the night back. It started skittering up the wall to try to get away.

A flash of blue speared across the cave, an ice arrow from Nidas. It struck the lower joint on one of the Elder's legs, the expansion of ice catching another and anchoring both to the wall. The monster slipped, started to fall, then caught itself and managed to pull its frozen legs apart, breaking the encasement and sending icicles raining down.

Before it could continue its climb up the wall, though, Glynda sent her aura down her sleeve to trigger gravity Dust and conjured the magic above the Elder, right in its face. She used her aura to invert the base magic, making it push instead of pull, and then pushed a huge amount of aura into it in an instant.

The resulting sudden expansion of the gravity sphere sent the Elder slamming back down to the ground where Ozpin's knight was waiting to resume its onslaught.

Glynda held the sphere in check (it wanted to continue expanding because gravity Dust only wanted to move one way—in or out), then pulled it down to the ground, moving it past the Elder and then towards the statue, knocking Weavers aside as it went. Once it got into what was more or less the center of the fight, Glynda let go of the magic, then quickly reclaimed it, now using her aura to flip it back to its natural state of Pull. A useful and difficult trick, and the most efficient way of reversing already activated gravity Dust.

The result was a gravity well in the middle of the battlefield that pulled everything in. Weavers were dragged across the floor or flailed through the air towards it, and the radius caught almost all of them.

It caught Nidas too, but he flared his aura out to resist the effect and jumped back to Ozpin, out of range.

Just then Ozpin clapped his hands together, the magic he was building up finally going off.

A deafening rumble shook the cavern, then suddenly on either side of Glynda's gravity well rose two thick walls of rock. They climbed up almost to the ceiling, stopped for a moment, then clapped together, much like Ozpin's hands had done but much, _much_ louder.

The Weavers caught in the well were squashed, some of their black blood spurting out from between the two immense slabs of stone.

Glynda's gravity magic was also crushed, something she consciously felt as her ability to influence the Dust winked out.

There were a little over a dozen Grimm left in the cavern now. Glynda and Nidas picked off the smaller Weavers with missiles and arrows while the knight battled the Elder.

It looked like that fight was starting to go in the Elder's favor. It beat back the knight and started taking chunks out of its torso with its disgusting pincers, purple and red magic inside pluming out of the wounds.

The knight pushed the monster back to make space, then raised its shield and charged again.

This time, the Elder Weaver met the charge, rearing back on four legs and then slamming into its opponents. The resulting impact shattered the knight's shield, rock scattering and gravity magic dissipating along its forearm.

The knight, now beaten down to one knee with the weight of a biting Elder Weaver hammering on its upper body, flicked out its now free hand. Purple magic coalesced around it and then around the Weaver's torso, looking almost like the knight was Dust casting itself.

It pushed and the Weaver was slammed back into the wall, pinned by magic, its legs swiping fruitlessly at the air as it screeched. The knight held its sword out to its side and the flames of the blade flickered out. Confusion knotted Glynda's brow but for a moment, because the blade then quickly returned, this time in the deep violets of gravity magic. The knight extended the new blade behind it, toward the walls of rock that Oz had conjured, and pieces and chunks broke off from the structures to speed toward it and encase the gravity magic, forming a blade of stone.

With the other hand still held high to hold the gravity magic pinning the Weaver, the knight pivoted towards it, lunged forward, and thrusted its new sword deep into the evil creature's abdomen.

Its scream was louder and shriller and more blood-curdling than any it had let out yet.

With one final motion of effort, the knight sent a burst of fire down its blade, and when it got to the Weaver the magic erupted in a fiery explosion that made Glynda squint and raise a hand to block the light.

Brighter than the average Dust flame.

The Elder's scream ended, its corpse already dissolving amongst the conflagration. The knight turned their way, more visible as a silhouette against the flames than anything else. Its sword arm had been blown off in the explosion, as well as its sword, trails of magic swirling from the stump, the purple contrasting against the fire.

It gave them a brisk salute with its remaining hand, then crumbled away, leaving behind one last small burst of violet and red as it left, the remaining Dust magic that had gone unused burning up.

A deafening silence stretched as the battle ended. Glynda lowered herself to the ground, landing lightly in the pool and extending her aura out a bit so her heels wouldn't get wet.

She stood quietly and watched the flames of the Dust knight smolder and slowly sputter out, taking in what she'd just watched. The knight...

She could do that. She _would_ do that. She hadn't really learned anything new in Dust casting the past couple of years, instead just mastering finer control as she taught her students. But that was enough complacency; she needed to push herself to improve again, like she had when she was a student herself. This seemed like a worthy goal. If she could summon a t—

"Did you just… salute _yourself_?" Nidas asked, breaking the silence.

"_That's_ what you took away from that?" Glynda said. She was tempted to give this clown detention. She could do it, too, despite him being a professor. There was no doubt in her mind that Nidas would begrudgingly sit and pout in her classroom for an hour if she told him to.

Ozpin just chuckled though. "I'm sure you'd find some enjoyment in it to, if you were able to do it," he said lightly.

"Nah, I'm more mature than that."

Ozpin raised an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling, then turned to Glynda. They rolled their eyes at each other and said in unison, "Children."

While Glynda walked over to him, Ozpin raised a hand out in front of him, palm down, and lowered it like he was slowly pushing down on something. With the motion, the two walls of stone he'd raised began receding back down into the ground with a rumble.

With that, the cavern was more or less clean. The ooze of decaying Grimm was fading away, the fires had died out. There were just a pile of rock where the knight fell, a few craters that Nidas had created, and a groove in the far wall that trailed down to and across the floor where Glynda's gravity sphere had compressed the stone.

Ah, and the iced over cracks.

Glynda headed over to the two walls, using her semblance to levitate an inch off the ground to move faster, and sealed the cracks shut properly with earth Dust. The disgusting creatures lurking inside the walls would starve out eventually.

When she came back to them, Oz and Nidas were both standing in front of the statue, staring up at it.

"I think we're done here," Glynda announced.

"Mm," Ozpin replied.

Glynda couldn't imagine how surreal of an experience it was to be standing in front of a statue you carved in another lifetime, with people standing at your side that wouldn't have been born for generations back when you were making it.

That weirdness, however it felt, probably explained Oz's non-committal response.

"So that's a goddess, huh," Nidas remarked, pointing at the silvery-gold light inside the statue's lantern.

It took a moment for Oz to stir from and blink away whatever thoughts he was lost in. "Just a large chunk of her soul. Her aura, if you will. Not her consciousness."

"Right, because that's in… Ruby?" Nidas continued, his tone displaying his skepticism.

"Mm," Ozpin agreed.

"Is she the goddess of hyperactive goofyness and friendship or something?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you," Glynda grinned.

Ozpin cleared his throat and met their eyes solemnly, like he was about to say something serious. "If this heightened Grimm activity is building up to something, I need you two to remember this place if something bad happens. If something happens and our world ends up in danger, _make sure_ Ruby gets here. I have a feeling we're going to need Auora to wake up and help us fight."

"Fight who? The Salem lady?" Nidas asked.

Ozpin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yes, Nidas. Probably the Salem lady."

"Have you tried just, like, asking her out to a movie or something?"

"Nidas!" Glynda hissed.

"I'm just saying, maybe she doesn't _have_ to be a bad guy!"

"She killed, absorbed, and became the god of chaos centuries ago," Ozpin said tiredly, almost sadly. "I think she's well past the point of redemption."

"... Right."

Glynda waved the idiot child away and faced Ozpin full on. "Why are you telling us this? Are you thinking you won't be here to bring Ruby yourself?"

"Oh no, I'm sure I will be," Ozpin answered. "I just want to make sure everyone is on the same page. Make sure Bart and Pete know too, and I'll tell Qrow."

"And Tai?"

"Ah yes. And Tai."

The frown that creased Oz's forehead told Glynda he was thinking the same thing she was: that would be a tough sell.

Ozpin glanced up to the skylight and let out a long breath. "This can wait 'till later. I could be totally wrong and we might have nothing to worry about. Focus on what we know we _must_ do, and that's train our young students as best we can. Regardless of Salem, we will need our huntsmen at their best. Now let's get back to our sc—"

He was cut off as all their scrolls buzzed. Glynda had a suspicion what it would be…

| Cpt Hightower: True have left VC. Investigating to determine what they were doing.

Wonderful. Another interruption with absolutely useless information.

Glynda rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "I need tea."

* * *

**Oof. Sorry about the delay. This chapter ended up being a monster. 15,639 words Q.Q I feel like I should start skipping dialogue lol**

**Hope you enjoyed! The next chapter might take a while too b/c I need to do some research on how the hell smithing actually works. I have no idea how to go about writing fixing or upgrading Crescent Rose lol. If any of you know anything or know resources for me to use, please share!**


	38. Squall 4-1

Her enemy was a giant oatmeal cookie. It stood between her and a giant plate of _real_ cookies, taunting her. It jerked towards her and a volley of evil raisins shot out. She dodged what she could and sliced through the rest with Crescent Ro—

Wait, where was Crescent Rose?! And why was Ruby holding a giant asparagus instead?!

Nooooooooooooo!

"Ruby, wake _up_!" a bossy voice demanded, echoing around her.

Oh no, it was Weiss! Was she going to force Ruby to eat this terrible scythe-imposter vegetable?

Ruby started running. Weiss couldn't make her eat vegetables if she couldn't catch her!

"Heyyy, wake up!"

The world shook, but when Ruby slowly blinked her eyes open, it turned out it was actually just her shoulder. She rolled over with a groan and found Weiss hanging off the edge of her bed, grumping down at her imperioriousingly.

"Hmmmmehhh?" Ruby blubbered.

"Did you want to run with me or not?" Weiss huffed.

"Runnern… from da oatmerr cookie?"

"... What?"

Ruby rubbed at her eyes and opened them wider to see that Weiss was wearing one of her cute athletic outfits that hugged her really tightly and had the criss-crossy racerback designs.

"Mmmcute," Ruby remarked.

Weiss blinked, confused. "What? Ruby, are you waking up or not?"

Ruby groaned again, louder and more dramatically this time, and pushed herself up, shaking away her sleepiness. Right, she was supposed to go running with Weiss this morning!

"I'm erwake!" she sputtered, jumping out of bed and rushing into the bathroom closet to change into her own workout clothes. Just a t-shirt and some running shorts, but whatever. She gave her teeth a quick scrubadub with Toothy von Brushmeister because morning breath was just the worst.

When she hopped back out of the bathroom, Weiss was standing by the door with her arms crossed, tapping her feet. Drama queen. xD

"Ready?" she asked.

Ruby grabbed her scroll and headphones so she could jam while she ran. "Yep!" she chirped.

Weiss opened the door for her and they headed down together. "What was that you were saying about oatmeal cookies?" Weiss asked as they walked.

Ruby chuckled nervously and scratched her head the way Yang does a lot, feeling ridiculous. "Oh, nothing! Don't worry about it."

Weiss' eyes smiled.

When they got outside, Weiss stopped and laid a hand against the wall, leaning against it to start stretching.

"Weiss, you're not supposed to stretch cold muscles!"

Weiss blinked at her. "What?"

"You gotta warm up first before you stretch 'cause it works better and you won't pull anything that way." This was just basic stuff! Ruby's known that forever!

"That sounds like a bunch of malarkey," Weiss huffed.

"_You're_ malarkey!"

"You're supposed to stretch _first_, Ruby. Everybody knows that!"

Ruby stomped over, putting on her best 'I know more than you' face. "Nuh-uh! Those people are wrong! Our parents taught us you gotta warm up first and they know their stuff! And then you gotta stretch after the workout too."

Weiss squinted at her. "Hmm… Your parents were—are, uh… they graduated from Beacon, right?"

Ruby knew what the little stumble Weiss did there was, trying to avoid referring to Mom in with a past or present tense. It was sweet. Unnecessary though! Ruby was totally fine with… what happened to Mom.

"Yep!" she said cheerily.

Weiss gave her one of those squinty, 'what are you thinking?' looks for a long moment, then pursed her lips to the side. "Well… maybe they knew—know, uh… could be right."

"You don't have to do that you know," Ruby frowned at her.

"Do what? I'm not doing anything!" Weiss said, her tone hinting at just enough nervousness that Ruby had to laugh.

She waved it off. "C'mon! Let's get going!" She plopped her earphones on and started walking as she pulled out her scroll to play a song when Weiss tugged on her elbow.

"I go that way," she said, pointing in the other direction.

"Oh!" Ruby fell in beside her. "Is this way better?"

"Well you don't have to run towards the sun and then when you come back around the Battle Center blocks it. And there's a good uphill section but coming back downhill isn't so steep, which is nice because you get the uphill workout and running downhill sucks. So yeah, it's better."

Ruby blinked. "You thought about this way too much," she teased.

"Yeah, well, I have to think extra because of the void of brainpower from my partner!" Weiss snipped back, making Ruby cackle. "Now come on. We gotta do three laps. No using aura until the last one!"

'_Three?! No aura?!'_

What were these ridonculous rules?

Weiss started running, a cross country run with long strides and lots of airtime. Almost bounding. Ruby hurried to hit shuffle on her PogChamp playlist and sprinted to catch up, then settled into the same long distance running form. She pushed herself to go ever so slightly faster than Weiss 'cause she wanted to show her how fit she was. _And_ 'cause going fast was, like, Ruby's whole thing. No way could she let a princess beat her!

"And no semblancing!" Weiss yelled at her back.

"I'm not!" Ruby yelled over her shoulder. She was quite pleased that she was going so fast that Weiss thought she was cheating, though.

The weather was actually really nice. The air was a little humid and carried the promise of a pretty warm summer day, but the early morningness right now had a cool breeze and a tame sun. Maybe waking up at this unholy hour had its upsides.

Not that she could ever let Weiss hear her say that.

Her ability to muse on the weather and enjoy her music last about a minute and a half before she found she had to focus a little bit on her breathing. Or a lot a bit, really. She'd been too distracted by trying to go faster than Weiss she'd forgotten to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, so she was starting to cramp already.

Maybe she should slow down?

… Naaaah.

"Go right!" Weiss called out behind her a little bit later as Ruby reached a corner.

Still in the lead, haha!

By the time they reached the next turn, though, Weiss was basically on her heels. Was Weiss getting faster, or was Ruby getting slower?

Weiss was probably pretty good at keeping a constant pace, so it was probably the second, which was unacceptable! She pushed herself to go faster.

Then they got to the uphill part.

Now her slightly burning lungs were compounded with slightly burning legs.

Weiss caught up to Ruby, running alongside her. Ruby glanced over at her partner to see Weiss side-eyeing her with one of her tiny micro-grins, then quickly turned her eyes back ahead of her when she noticed Ruby looking.

'_Darn smirky princess!'_

Ruby pushed herself to go faster again, ignoring the protests in her chest and thighs and calves.

It was a relief when the hill sloped down. Weiss was right. It was a nice, gradual decline that wasn't hard on her ankles and knees.

Unfortunately, Weiss' ever so slightly longer legs carried her even further with each stride than before. It was enough that she was outpacing Ruby. She was probably able to launch herself harder with each step than Ruby was with her exhausted legs.

Weiss pulled ahead.

'_Gosh darn it.'_

Ruby could probably push herself to take the lead again, but… she was getting tired. And they needed to do two more laps?

Ugh.

Her pride was taking a beating for not being in the lead. She was supposed to be the fastest. Although… there was an upside to being second. She got to see Weiss running. It was a pretty nice view. Her ponytail was bouncing all adorably and her… well, suffice to say the rest of her in her tight fitting athletic wear just looked great.

Maybe being second was okay sometimes!

A couple minutes later, Weiss had kept up a steady pace to end up a good ten feet ahead when they reached the front of their dorm building again.

"H-hey, Weiss!" Ruby croaked, pulling her headphones down around her neck. Talking kinda hurt her diaphragm. "We should stop… and stretch," she huffed between pants for breath.

Weiss started slowing down to a walk as Ruby caught up to her, placing her hands on top of her head and taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. She looked Ruby up and down as she slowed to a walk as well, somehow looking smug even though her expression was blank.

Ruby stopped to lean forward with her hands on her knees, panting.

Weiss gave her a slap on the shoulder with the backside of her hand and gestured for Ruby to straighten up and keep walking. "Don't lean over, you'll cramp," she advised, sounding a little out of breath herself.

"Yeah, yeah… I know." Ruby put her hands on her head like Weiss and focused on breathing right. She _did_ know that, she just kinda forgot about it 'cause everything in her body kinda hurt right now.

At least it sounded like Weiss was out of breath too.

They walked a bit more until Ruby felt like she could breathe right again, then she stopped and moved over to the grass by the sidewalk to stretch. Weiss followed her lead.

Ruby started with toe touches, trying to touch her nose to her knees. She still had never quite managed to do it. A glance showed Ruby that Weiss was doing the same, which was kinda neat. Letting Ruby lead. It was also kinda funny to watch Weiss' ponytail swing back and forth in the breeze like a pendulum.

"How long do you do the stretches for?" Ruby asked after a bit.

"Twenty seconds, then break, then ten seconds," Weiss answered, her voice hitched with the weirdness of being bent over.

"Oh," Ruby grunted. "Yang and I just do fifteen."

"My way's better."

Ruby snickered. "Okay," she conceded. More stretching was probably good. And it meant a longer break, which was good.

A few moments passed in silence.

"Uh… are you counting?" Ruby asked. "'Cause I forgot to start counting."

Weiss let out a snicker of her own and straightened up. "Yes, Ruby, I was counting."

"Oh, cool." Ruby straightened and wiggled her legs a bit, softly singing "Shake it off, shake it off" under her breath like Yang always did. She then bent down to stretch again, Weiss following suit. She made sure to actually count this time.

Next came the quads. Ruby grabbed one of her feet behind her and pulled it to her butt and reached out to place her other hand on Weiss' shoulder to help balance herself. Weiss scrunched up her nose a bit and half-glared at Ruby at the physical contact.

"What?" Ruby asked. "This is what I do with Yang!"

Weiss made a frowny face for a couple seconds, then shrugged and followed suit, placing a hand Ruby's shoulder. It was a really light touch, though, to the point Ruby wasn't positive Weiss was actually getting any benefit to her balance from it.

"Should I restart my counting?" Ruby asked.

Weiss gave a half-eyeroll. "Just let me do the counting, dolt."

"... Yeah, okay."

"You know, I was sorta expecting you to be faster," Weiss said quietly.

"Hwaa?! I'm fast!" Ruby squeaked.

"Sure, I just thought you'd be some sort of speed demon or something."

"I—pbbbt! I am! Just… If you didn't have your dumb rules against using aura, I'd be smoking you!"

"Uh-huh."

"_And_ I'd totally destroy you in sprints!" Ruby tacked on indignantly. She pulled her other leg back and grabbed onto Weiss' other shoulder.

"Hmph," Weiss grunted. "That's probably true. What about Yang? Do you beat her in sprints?"

"Nooo," Ruby sighed sadly. "She's too strong and her legs are too long. I can _almost _keep up with her if we're not using aura, but once she's pumping power into her legs I don't stand a chance. Her muscle-aura saturation is way too stronk."

"I figured. Watching her in sparring matches was kinda scary. She's…"

"Explosive?" Ruby offered.

Weiss made a show of considering the term for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, that sounds right."

They switched legs again.

"Just wait 'til _you're_ fighting her, watching her charge at you. It's terrifying."

Weiss' stared off into the middle distance, gaze unfocused, then gave a dramatic shiver. The expressiveness made Ruby smile.

Last switch.

"Crescent Rose is scarier than Yang, though, and you handled her pretty well," Ruby added.

Weiss nodded sagely. "It _is_ pretty scary. Don't forget to pick it up from the forge tonight."

"_Her,_ and I won't!" Ruby chirped, aghast. To think Weiss thought it was even a possibility that Ruby could forget about Crescent Rose! Forgemaster Onyx assured her that he'd have her Rose fixed up before dinner tonight 'cause he was super cool and awesome. It was kinda hard to _not_ be awesome when you're an almost-seven foot tall super buff dude with sweet ram horns that's a legendary weaponsmith and also super nice and helpful.

He was easily in Ruby's top five favorite adults list.

Ruby ended the stretch and plopped down on the ground to do sitting toe touches. Weiss sat as well, facing the opposite direction. Ruby scooted over so the sides of their legs were touching and reached out for Weiss' hand.

"Uh, what?" Weiss asked, frowning down at their touching legs.

Ruby waved her hand in front of Weiss. "We gotta pull each other!" she chirped.

Still frowning, Weiss raised her hand up and held it in the air next to Ruby's hand. With a roll of her eyes, Ruby grabbed it and pulled Weiss toward her, simultaneously reaching for her toes with her other hand. Weiss let out a silly squeak as she was yanked forward, but then settled into the stretch like Ruby.

"You gotta pull me too, Princess," Ruby said because it didn't feel like Weiss was doing much of anything on her end.

"I am!" Weiss protested.

Ruby blinked at her.

Weiss' face scrunched up, halfway between cringing at herself and laughing at herself, and started pulling Ruby a bit harder. Grinning, Ruby tugged back.

Weiss squeaked again, glared at Ruby, then pulled again.

Soon their stretch turned into a squeaky contest of tug of war, rife with Ruby's giggles.

"Stop it, dolt!" Weiss whined. "This is terrible stretching!"

Ruby stopped jerking Weiss' arm around and applied a steady pull with one last giggle. "You know, Yang pulled my hamstring one time doing this 'cause she pulled so hard she basically yeeted me behind her."

"Note to self: never stretch with Yang," Weiss muttered.

Laughing, Ruby hopped up and quickly moved over to Weiss' other side.

"Can you touch your nose to your knees?" Ruby asked as she settled back into the stretch.

"Mm-hmm!" Weiss hummed proudly before demonstrating.

"Darn it," Ruby pouted.

"Blake can touch her nose to the ground," Weiss told her. "Saw her stretching before she fought Ren."

"The _ground_?"

"Yep. Her ligaments must be rubber or something."

"Would explain a lot."

They spent the next couple minutes chatting as they stretched their legs before Weiss cleared her throat and moved back to the sidewalk. "Now that you've cheated your way into a break, you ready to get back to running?" she grinned.

"I did not ch—what?! That's not what happened!" Ruby argued as they started jogging together.

"You know, I run three laps in a row and this was a long break, so maybe we should do an extra l—"

"No, that doesn't sound right!"

"No?" Weiss asked, shooting her a smirk.

"Nope!"

Weiss' pace picked up and Ruby matched her. "Well, I usually end up walking for a bit on the third lap, so maybe we just two more and don't walk on the last one."

'_Phew.'_

"Sounds good!"

"You don't want to race ahead of me again?" Weiss still had that knowing smirk on her face.

They were getting to a speed where it was getting hard to run and talk at the same time. "Naaah, I wanna… you know, see what it's like… slum it back here with the… slowpokes."

"Uh-huh," Weiss intoned.

Ruby wanted to keep chatting and joking with Weiss because it was great, but she really needed to focus on her breathing now. That last lap taught Ruby that she definitely could not try to race against Weiss again. She could barely breathe at the end of the lap and they needed to do _two in a row_ this time.

Ugggh.

She set her headphones back on her ears and resumed her music. She had no idea how Weiss could bear to run without any music though. It must be boring to just hear footsteps. Either way, this dynamic of running beside Weiss felt nice. And every once in a while Ruby caught Weiss looking over at her. Ruby would shoot her a smile and Weiss would reply with a long blink that Ruby supposed was one of Weiss' weird ways of smiling.

She _hoped_ it was a smile.

This time Ruby didn't totally wind herself right at the start of the lap so she didn't cramp up and was able to keep pace with Weiss without _too_ much difficulty. It was still pretty hard. Weiss was fit.

When the front of the dorm came into view again, though, Ruby was ready to pop off.

"Can we use... aura now?!" Ruby panted.

"Wait… for iiiit," Weiss said.

Ruby waited.

They passed the dormitory doors.

"Now!" Weiss called out.

Ruby set aura slamming from her heart down through her legs. It made her muscles feel like they were vibrating. They both ramped up in speed immediately, pushing further with ever stride.

The speed and feeling were exhilarating.

Ruby peeled ahead of Weiss, moving _way_ faster than she was before. With her aura boosting her, Ruby's long distance speed was freaking epic, and even that was nothing compared to her semblance speed. She left Weiss behind.

"I… what?!" she heard Weiss pant behind her.

Ruby would have cackled if she had the breath for it.

The diaphragm cramping and leg burning started to set in halfway through the uphill part. She pushed through it. Pushed _past_ it. When the downhill section came, it was a relief, though the burning didn't cease, it just stopped building so quickly.

As soon as the dorm came into view, Ruby pushed herself to 110%. Dad always told her to go all in for the last stretch when she felt like falling over 'cause that's when you get stronger.

She past the front doors going a thousand million miles an hour and tried to slow down but her legs quit out on her, turning to jelly. She tumbled face first onto the sidewalk, reinforcing her aura to protect herself from the concrete as she went rolling.

Thank the Goddess for aura.

She came to a stop on her back and splayed out her arms, heaving. Twenty seconds later, Weiss came to a stop above her, wheezing and coughing herself.

Dang, Ruby left her _way_ behind.

Weiss walked a circle around Ruby, hands on her head, before she collapsed herself, planting her butt in the grass by Ruby's head and leaning back on her hands. She was struggling to breath.

"You… you okay?" Ruby asked.

"H… how did you… why am I so sl… so slow?! With aura… you just…" she waved a hand around. "And I… suck! Ugh!"

She flopped onto her back and splayed her arms like Ruby.

"Nuh-uh!" Ruby argued, too tired and out of breath to form a coherent argument right now. She reached out to pat Weiss to comfort her and ended up slapping her stomach like a goomba and found her arm too heavy to pick back up.

"Why are you… hitting me?" Weiss huffed.

"I was tryin'... to p… pat…" Ruby trailed off, too distracted trying to remember how to breathe.

"How come… my muscles just… can't take aura?" Weiss asked. She looked… really upset. Was she having one of her self-hating moments?

No! That was not acceptable!

Ruby rolled over and crawled up to get level with Weiss and laid back down using Weiss' bicep as a pillow.

"What are you… get off!" Weiss said with a whine. "You're all sweaty!" She yanked her arm away.

Ruby pouted and settled back on the grass. "If you wanna… get better mus… muscle aura satur… ation, you should work out… with Yang."

Weiss turned to frown at Ruby. "Yeah?"

Ruby nodded. "She got me… as good as I am."

"I don't know, Ruby… I just suck… I don't think… I can be help—"

"Yes you can!" Ruby cut in. She refused to let Weiss do this again. She pushed herself up and swatted Weiss' stomach again for good measure. "You just gotta... train! I got this good... by training right... _Yang_ got as good... as she is by training right... If you train right too then you'll get… get better!"

Weiss started trying to sit up too but her arms shook and she feel back down. "How come you're not... as strong as Yang, then?"

Ruby shrugged. "Biology." Her breathing had steadied out now, though her legs still felt like spaghetti.

"Huh?"

Ruby waited for a while before responding, trying to catch her breath again. "You know, some people just have a higher limit on what they can reach for saturation. Just like normie people trying to build muscle. Some people just can't bulk up, some can. Aura's the same way. Our dad is jacked as heck, both with regular muscles and saturation, and Yang inherited it. And I didn't, 'cause Dad's a big fat jerk, I guess."

"So even if I train my butt off, I won't get as strong as Yang?" Weiss pouted.

It was hard for Ruby to resist rolling her eyes. "Why do you _need_ to be as strong as Yang? It's not like Yang can ever reach your level in Dust casting. We all have our strengths. Don't worry about reaching Yang's level, just get as strong as you can and then keep yourself there."

Weiss went quiet for a while. Ruby looked back at her to see her staring up at the sky. Had Ruby convinced her? Or was she supposed to add something to drive the point home? Or—

"Okay," Weiss said.

"Okay?" Ruby blinked, kinda surprised it had been so easy.

"Yeah," Weiss replied simply. "As long as she's okay with it."

It took a second for Ruby to connect the words to the right thing and figure out what Weiss meant. "Why wouldn't she be?"

Weiss shrugged.

Things were quiet for a moment. Ruby took the opportunity to get in some more stretching, and Weiss slowly pushed herself up to follow suit.

"You think it would go the other way too?" Weiss asked after a while.

"Whadaya mean?"

"You think Yang and maybe you or Blake would want some help training with Dust casting?" she clarified. "Because… I'd be willing to. Maybe."

Ruby lit up at that. "Yeah! I'd love that! I, uh, Yang would probably want to too, although I have to warn you she gets really mad at Dust when it doesn't do what she wants. I dunno about Blake though."

"Mm."

"I could just order her to accept your training with my team leader powers."

"Calm down, Miss Authoritarian," Weiss said as she tried to touch her nose to her knee.

Ruby laughed at that. "And maybe she can teach us how to be a super stealth ninja tracker."

"That's a very specific skillset," Weiss remarked.

"Mhm."

"... What about you? What special training can you give us?"

Ruby scratched her head. What skills did she excel at? She was awesome at slicing up Grimm, but that was just kinda a combo of all her other skills and the boost of having an awesome semblance. Other than that, there was… "Eating cookies?" she tried.

Weiss gave her a face.

"Heehee. Uh… I'm guessing videogames wouldn't be an acceptable answer either?"

Weiss shook her head.

"Hmph…" Ruby was stumped.

"Your thing could be the team combos and stuff you're always talking about," offered Weiss.

"Oh, true! I forgot about that!"

Weiss gave her a smile. "You know, you mentioned naming formations yesterday…"

"Yeah?" Ruby asked excitedly. Naming formations sounded like so much fun, and if Weiss wanted to _talk _about it so Ruby wouldn't just be nerding out alone, that was even better!

"Instead of naming them after videogames or whatever, I was thinking it would be neat to do something my sister told me she did and name them after chess pieces and gambits."

Ruby's jaw dropped. "That _would_ be cool! I don't really know chess stuff though." As she talked, she pushed herself to her feet and offered Weiss a hand, which she took.

"I know a little bit," Weiss said, her legs wobbling a bit as she got her feet under her. "Oof," she muttered, rubbing at her thighs.

"Same," Ruby agreed.

"You just said you _don't_ know chess stuff."

"Huh?" Ruby blinked at her. "Oh, when I said 'same' I was referring to your 'oof'. My legs hurt too."

"Ooooh. That makes sense. But yeah, I just know a little bit. Winter was the one that was really into chess."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mm. And my father."

Ruby got quiet, not sure what was okay to say now.

Weiss continued without any prompting, though. "Winter played against me when we were little, but she got way better than me and started playing against the computer instead to get good enough to beat our father."

"Oh…" That sounded… healthy. "Did she?"

"Yes. When she was fourteen, I think?" Weiss frowned a bit.

"Did _you_?" Ruby followed up before realizing maybe that would be a bad thing to ask.

"No, I haven't played him—or played at all, really—in years, since Winter stopped playing with me. I did my best to limit contact with him." She paused for a moment, a weird look on her face, then continued, "Of course, Winter couldn't stand being in the same room as him either, but her desire to beat him outweighed that I suppose. Trying to prove something to him, I guess."

"... Yeah," Ruby said, not sure how to respond.

"Whitley plays against him pretty regularly, I think. Not sure how he does, though. We didn't talk much."

Ruby couldn't imagine ever living in a house with a sibling and not talking to them _all the time_. Sure, Ruby and Yang and Dad liked to compete with each other in videogames and stuff, but it was a fun competition. What Weiss was describing sounded a bit more… toxic?

Weiss' life before Beacon was so frickin' weird. It was nice that she seemed open to talking about it, though. At least right now.

They reached the base of the stairs in the lobby and Weiss stopped, glaring down at the first step.

"Who put these stairs here?" she demanded of nobody in particular. "They should be drawn and quartered!"

Ruby giggled. "Weiss Schnookums, was that a joke?" she teased.

"Yes, yes it w—_Schnookums_? Why am I Schnookums?"

Ruby shrugged happily. It felt right 'cause Weiss always seemed to react weirdly whenever she heard her last name, but Ruby wouldn't tell her that.

Weiss took the first step up the stairs and groaned. "I think I pushed myself too hard at the end trying to catch up to you," she sighed.

"There's no such thing as pushing yourself too hard," Ruby said in her best Wise Sensei voice.

"Pretty sure my quads and calves are saying that's a bunch of baloney."

"Fair," Ruby conceded, making her own slow way up the stairs with her partner. "Should ask Yang for a massage."

"You make it seem like Yang just knows how to do everything," Weiss huffed, wincing as she climbed.

"When it comes to exercising and physio… care… stuff, she pretty much does. How to work out, weightlift, scheduling workouts, stretch, massage, even diet."

"But she just eats meat!"

"Hehehe. She doesn't _just_ eat meat. She just eats a lot more than normal. Which is _why_ she's so stronk. If you want to get stronger like you were saying before, you _do_ need to eat—"

"Yeah yeah yeah," Weiss grumbled, waving at her. "She already nags me enough about it. Don't you start too."

Ruby snorted out a laugh. "'Kay. So how does the chess formation thing work?" she asked as they crested the top of the stairs.

"I'm not sure. If we can make it back to the room I'll shoot Winter a message to ask."

Ruby glanced down the hallway to their dorm room door. "_If_ we make it back?"

"There's a non-zero chance my legs fall off before we get there."

"Ha!"

Alas, they did indeed make it back to their room, legs attached. Yang and Blake, being normal, healthy human beings, were still asleep.

Weiss shuffled over to the corner of her bed and then just stopped there, staring at her covers, shoulders slumped, lips pouty.

"Why you so boo?" Ruby asked with a big grin.

Weiss moved a hand a bit, vaguely gesturing at her bed. "I wanna lay down so bad."

"Then… do that?" Ruby said.

"But I'm all sweatyyy," Weiss whined. "I need to shower, but I feel like if I do my legs are gonna end up quitting on me and I'll fall down."

"... You could take a bath?" Ruby offered.

That made Weiss wrinkle her nose. "But the tub is so _small_!"

"Heh?" Ruby squeaked. "It's a totally normal tub size!"

Weiss squinted at her for a few seconds, then took a deep breath. "You need to come over to my house at some point. You'll see what a _real_ bathtub looks like."

Ruby's eyes went wider and wider as she tried to imagine what a Schnee-sized bathtub would look like. "What, does your tub have its own area code?"

Weiss' eyes twinkled. "Maybe," she answered.

Ruby gave her partner's shin a light kick. "Go shower, you beautiful idiot. And be fast! I want to clean up too."

Weiss went pink and ducked her head, hiding her face behind her ponytail as she shuffled into the bathroom.

Now Ruby had to wait. She ended up flipping through a comic book while sitting against the bedpost Weiss had been leaning against to not get sweat on her own bed or chair.

Blake started waking up a few minutes into Weiss' "quick" shower. She let out a long yawn and stretched her arms over her head, curling hands and fingers like little paws. After a long bit of rolling around under her covers, she settled on her side looking over at Ruby.

"Sup?" she mumbled.

"Morning!" Ruby smiled.

Blake pointed up and down at Ruby, indicating her clothes. "You go do the… running thing with Weiss?"

"Yup!"

Blake rolled onto her back and rubbed at her eyes. "How'd that go?"

"Great! We're both exhausted, though. We pushed ourselves pretty hard… My legs hurt."

Blake pushed herself up and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. "What time is it?"

"Seven thirty-ish?"

Blake groaned, which made Ruby laugh, then stood and stretched. "Whatcha reading?" she asked, pointing at the comic in Ruby's hands.

"Oh!" Ruby perked up. She didn't get to talk about her comics much!

"Sssshhh!" Blake hissed, glancing over her shoulder at Yang.

"Right, sorry," Ruby whispered. She held the front of her comic book up for Blake to see. "It's The Amazing Psych-Man and Tap-Man. It's just a silly joke comic."

"Ah." Blake flicked some sleepywinks out of her eyes, then flicked her scroll open to turn off her alarm. "You know, I finished the series I was reading yesterday. Been thinking about what to read next…" She looked at Ruby, who perked up even more. "You got any recommendations?" she finished, gesturing to the section of their bookshelf with Ruby's comics.

"Gasp!"

"Sssshhh!"

"Sorry!" Ruby crawled over to the bookshelf and started pulling things out. "Ermahgersh, yes! So my favorite series is Tales of the Reaper—it's got the best storyline out of all the Grimm Reaper comics, _and_ the best art. There's also all the Revengers stuff. A few of them are meh, but there's, like, War of the Heroes and the Captain Vale Versus the Atlesian Knight, those are both awesome. I also really like Age of Hyperion, even though a lot of people don't, but a lot of people are _dumb_. If you don't want superhero stuff, there's also the Fires of Greymark series, which is a mythical fantasy thing. _And_ I have a choose your own adven—"

"Ruby!"

"Huh? What?"

Blake messaged the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Just give me a recommendation? Let me try your favorite one, the Reaper whatsit."

"Tales of the Reaper!" Ruby said cheerily.

"Yeah, that one."

Ruby handed Blake the first volume, then stacked the other six in her arms after she took a moment to consider how fast Blake read. "So the main character is Maria Calavera, the first huntress that got big and famous as the Grimm Reaper. It starts in the—"

"Ruby!"

"Whaaaaaat?" she whined.

Blake gave her an admonishing frown. "Let me read it myself, please."

Ruby gave the girl a pout. "But I wanna talk about it."

"You will! _We_ will! _After_ I read them."

"... Okay," Ruby conceded, not letting up on her pout.

Blake rearranged the pile of comics in her hands so issue one was on top. "You're right, the art _is_ really pretty," she remarked.

"Yeah!" Ruby agreed. "They got a new colorist for this series, and the line artist definitely got better since the earlier Reaper series."

"Mm," was the only distracted response she got as Blake walked back to her bed, flipping through pages.

Well this was both awesome and sucky. She had a friend to talk comic books with but Blake didn't want to talk about 'em! Yet. Making Ruby be all patient and crap.

Ugh.

Speaking of being patient, apparently Weiss thought twenty minutes was a fast shower. Because of course she did. When Ruby finally heard the water shut off, she jumped up and knocked on the door.

"Weiss, hurry up! It's my turn!"

"I—hold on! One sec!"

There were some thumping and shuffling noises for a few seconds before Weiss cracked the door open to let Ruby in. She had a towel wrapped around her body that she was clutching together at her clavicle.

"Heehee, you're whiter than the towel," Ruby giggled.

"Shut _up_!" Weiss huffed. She kicked Ruby in the shin, then scampered into the closet.

Unsurprisingly, the hot water was almost gone now. Dumb Weiss. Didn't matter, though, 'cause Ruby was able to shower in five minutes just as the water was starting to get cold. Also unsurprisingly, Weiss hadn't managed to decide on an outfit yet. She was standing in front of her giganto mirror in a bra and panties while she held a skirt and blouse up to her front. When Ruby came in, though, she turned and tried to cover herself up.

"Oh, relax," Ruby said with a roll of her eyes. She got dressed, putting on one of her new pairs of black jeans, a tight red top, and then threw on one of the black button downs that Weiss had liked so much. Honestly, Ruby was starting to like this look a lot too. She looked so sophisticated, yet still cutesy and casual.

Weiss had made a final decision on a straight white skirt and pulled it on, but she was still trying to pick between two shirts. Ruby tried to creep up behind her, hoping to pinch her ribs, but Weiss saw her in the mirror.

"Don't you dare."

"Aw." Ruby walked up and rested her chin on Weiss' shoulder and smiled at her in the mirror. "Need some help?"

"Maybe," Weiss admitted. "What do you think: this one—" she held up a pink frilly blouse in front of her "—or this one?" She held up the other shirt, a white button down with a flowery collar. "I'd sorta match you with this one."

Ruby smiled wider, delighted that that was something Weiss thought was a plus now. "Yeah, but the other one shows off your shoulders and collarbone."

Weiss gave her a face in the mirror. "What is it with you and my shoulders?"

"Whadaya mean? They're nice shoulders!"

Weiss squinted at Ruby in the mirror, then lowered the shirt she held in front of her to look at her shoulders. First the right one, then the left. "Hm. I suppose."

"I vote pink," Ruby declared. "Now come on, you can't spend all day in the bathroom." She gave Weiss a little scratch on her back, then walked back out to the bedroom.

Blake was still in the bathroom and Yang was still sleeping like a big dumby. Ruby jumped up and shook her sister awake.

"Oi, ya big oaf! It's wakey wakey time!" She gave Yang another shake. "Hey!" She poked Yang's nose.

Yang's eyes opened so suddenly into a glare it scared the pants off Ruby.

"I will break you in half and throw the halves into opposite hemispheres, Ruby," she growled.

Yikes.

"C'mon, get up! Everyone else is awake!"

The glare Yang was giving her got even glare-ier. "You wake me up in the middle of the night just because everyone else is doing it?"

Ruby turned a bit to look at the sunlight streaming through the window right next to Yang's bed, then turned back to her sister. "Yang, it's almost eight AM."

"I know what I said."

"C'monnnnn," Ruby begged. "I'll make you coffee!"

Yang's glare started to ease up. "I am not moving until I have coffee in my hands."

"Woohoo!"

Ruby rushed to the living area. Pyrrha and Jaune were already there, cooking breakfast stuffs. And they had a pot of coffee brewing!

"Greetings, fellow superheroes!" she chirped.

"Hello again!"

"Morning, Ruby," Jaune said. "You wouldn't happen to know how to cook, would you? It's our turn and last time we did it Ren was so unimpressed he didn't speak to us for a whole day."

"Is that… unusual?" Ruby asked.

"Not really, no," Pyrrha grinned.

"Well I don't know how to cook anyway. You'd need to ask Yang for that. Speaking of Yang, can I steal a cup of coffee from you? She's demanding payment to get out of bed."

"Go for it." Jaune waved her into the kitchen.

"Careful," Pyrrha said, "Jaune made it _way_ too strong."

"I put in exactly the right amount!"

"You dumped _so much_ coffee in that filter, Jaune."

Ruby weaved around the kitchen while the two partners bickered playfully, filling a cup and adding extra milk and sugar to compensate for Jaune's nincompoopiness. "See you in class, guys!" she called over her shoulder as she scooted back over to their room, going agonizingly slowly to avoid spilling.

When she got back, Yang was sitting up at the edge of her bed, playfully trying to kick Blake's bow as Blake tried to make her bed.

"Hey, you moved!" Ruby accused her.

Yang frowned at her feet. "I 'spose I did," she agreed. "Now gimme gimme!" She held her hands out, opening and closing her fingers.

Ruby handed it up to her just as Weiss came out of the bathroom.

"Ooh, coffee," she remarked, sniffing the air. "Could I have a cup?"

"Uh, sure! One spoonful of sugar, right?"

"Yes, please. Teaspoon, not tablespoon."

"'Kay, bee arr bee!" Ruby ran back out and made it about three steps before her legs screamed at her in agony. Toning it down to a powerwalk and got back into the kitchen. "Could I steal one more cup from you guys?" she asked Jaune and Pyrrha.

"You can take as much as you want," Pyrrha groaned.

"You're being overly dramatic!" Jaune shot at her.

"I'm really not."

Ruby poured another cup, then got the sugar back out. She pulled the silverware drawer open and paused. "Guys, is a teaspoon the big one or the small one?"

"Small one," Pyrrha answered. "Why?"

"Weiss is picky."

"Ah."

"_Weiss_ is having my coffee?" Jaune croaked, blanching.

"Make sure you tell Weiss who made it," Pyrrha told Ruby, giving Jaune a squinty, grumpy look. "_After_ she takes a sip, though."

That was ominous. Ruby had no idea how to judge coffee. It looked black and smelled coffee-ish, which… checked out from what Ruby knew of coffee. "Is it that bad?" she asked.

"Yes."

"No!"

Ruby shuffled back to their room, leaving the two to their bickering again.

When she got back inside she placed the mug on Weiss' desk. Weiss was sitting there, one hand running through her ponytail while she clicked through some news page or something on her laptop.

"Thank you, Ruby," she said.

"Mhm!"

"Ruby, this coffee tastes funny," Yang said, still kicking her feet off the edge of her bed.

'_Uh-oh.'_ She was sure she'd put enough milk and sugar in Yang's for it to taste okay. Maybe it would still taste bad, though? She didn't know how coffee worked.

Weiss glanced at Yang, wide-eyed, then looked at Ruby. "What did you do?" she asked, the question an accusation.

"Nothing! I didn't even make it!"

That made Weiss narrow her eyes. "Well who did?"

"... Jaune…"

Yang snorted. "That'll do it."

Looking down her nose at the coffee at her desk, Weiss wrinkled her nose. "I'm not sure I did anything to deserve this, Ruby," she said.

"You haven't even tried it!"

Slowly—ever so slowly—Weiss raised the cup to her lips, blew on the top a little bit, and took a tiny sip.

She immediately let out a hacking cough. "Ugh! _What?_ How is it _so_ bitter?!"

"I thought you _like_ bitter though," Ruby protested quietly. Now she felt bad for bringing these two bad coffee.

'_Darn you, Jaune.'_

Yang seemed to be drinking hers, at least.

"I do, but this is _way_ too much," Weiss snapped at her.

"It's bitterer than grapefruit?" Ruby asked. That sounded pretty impossibru.

"Yes, it—no, it's _more bitter_. 'Bitterer' is not a word."

"Pretty sure it—"

"No!" Weiss cut her off. "No dumb jokes or made up words. Just… go make your bed, you dolt."

"Ugh!" Ruby groaned. "Finnnne."

"I'm going to go play the violin for a bit. Make sure you're ready for class, then you're welcome to join me.."

Right. Class. Ugh, Mondays.

"Now which team would like to go first?"

Ruby, Blake, and Yang all sank lower into their seats. Hopefully Professor Goodwitch wouldn't notice th—

Weiss shot her hand up.

A sudden urge to slap the girl upside the head almost overtook Ruby. Almost.

"Ow!" Weiss cried out suddenly. Yang had apparently had the same urge as Ruby and not suppressed it.

"Ah, Miss Xiao-Long. Thank you for volunteering your team," Professor Goodwitch said with a _look_.

"I, what? No, I wasn't—"

"Normally I'd have the team leader go first, but since you seem so enthusiastic to lead the class, I suppose we could go backwards. Come on up." The professor stepped to the side of her lectern and gestured for Yang to come stand by her.

"You will pay for this in blood!" Yang whispered at Weiss.

"It's not _my_ fault you hit me like some sort of heathen!" Weiss snapped back, rubbing the back of her head with a grimace.

Professor Goodwitch snapped open a little briefcase thing on her desk as Yang sulked up to the lectern. "If I recall correctly, your highest affinity is fire?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"_Yes, ma'am_," Weiss hissed under her breath. Blake gave a quite snort-laugh.

With a wizardy wave of her fingers, Professor Goodwitch made four tiny shards of fire Dust float out of the briefcase. She sent one over to float in front of Yang, the other three she kept, rotating them around her head.

Wizard.

"Now, class, I'll only have you working with your best affinity element today, but still pay attention as you will all have to do the exercise for fire Dust for homework."

At the mention of homework, pretty much the whole class collectively groaned. Miss Goodwitch just rolled her eyes.

"Now, Miss Xiao-Long, take that crystal and try to create a small fireball and spin it in a circle in your palm, like so." She raised a hand, palm up, and one of the crystals meandering around her head moved over it. The Dust lit up and turned into a small mote of flame. It sat there for a moment, just bein' a cute lil' fireball, then it started moving in a slow circle parallel to her palm. The tail end of the line of flame left behind faded just before the fireball caught up to it, so it ended up looking like a broken ring slowly spinning in place.

"Try to keep it going as long as possible, keep it a consistent size, and moving at an even speed," Professor Goodwitch finished. She closed her hand and the fire in it snuffed out.

'_Rest in peace, Baby Fireball,' _Ruby mourned.

Crossing her hands in front of her, Professor Goodwitch looked at Yang expectantly.

"Alright, easy-peasy!" Yang declared, clearly not bothered at being in the spotlight. She'd always been happy being the center of attention.

She raised her hand up and her little Dust crystal dropped into her palm, Miss Goodwitch apparently relinquishing her semblance on it.

"Ahem!" said Yang before squinting in concentration at the Dust. Half a second later the Dust popped, growing into a fireball that was almost twice as big as the professor's. It skittered across Yang's palm one way, then the other, then instead of spinning in a ring it just kinda rotated in place a bit, then burnt out.

Yang frowned down at her now empty palm. "Umm…"

Cardin and his crew of stooges started laughing but a glare from Professor Goodwitch shut them up.

"A good attempt," she said, sending one of the Dust crystals floating around her over to Yang. "Try again."

"And this time at least _try_ to do what the professor did," Weiss huffed, "instead of… whatever that was."

"I did try!" Yang shouted back angrily.

"Sssh," Miss Goodwitch cut in. "That's enough, Miss Schnee. Not everyone is lucky enough to have had the Dust and training you've had."

"Yeah, suck it, Weiss!" Yang followed up.

"Miss Xiao-Long."

Yang gave a frown to the professor. "Ugh, fine. You can unsuck it, Weiss."

"There will be no sucking or unsucking of anything in my classroom, thank you very much."

The whole class cracked up at that (save Weiss, who buried her face in her hands) while Miss Goodwitch crossed her arms, a tiny smile on her face. She waited for the laughter to die down before gesturing to Yang again. "Now, try again. This time, don't push so much aura into it all at once. You're going for a slow, steady burn, not an explosion."

"Okay." Yang squinted down at the new crystal. This time the flame came slowly. It looked like the inside of it ignited before the rest of it caught fire. The mote of flame was small, more like Professor Goodwitch's.

"Good, now use your aura to create a path for the fire. Don't push it, just give it a trail to follow."

Focusing harder than Ruby had ever seen her sister focus before, Yang got the little fireball moving. It wasn't a nice circle like the professor's was, more like a really screwed up pentagon, and the movements were jerky and sudden instead of smooth. And where the professor's fireball left a trail behind it that faded before the fireball could catch up, the trails left by Yang's fire never faded, so it ended up turning into a weird drawing. Yang kept the little break dancing flame going for about ten seconds before it fizzled out, the fireball getting too thin because of all the flame that was left behind.

"Very good, Miss Xiao-Long," Professor Goodwitch praised her. "Now we'll give you one more go at it, but first, could you tell me why I told you to create a trail for the fire, rather than push it?"

"Uh, 'cause you're the teacher and you get to tell me what to do?" Yang answered.

The joke got laughs from some, like Nora and Pyrrha and Leona, but Miss Goodwitch blinked at her, unimpressed.

"Umm…" Yang floundered a bit, clearly lacking an actual answer.

"For context, the Dust elements behave largely as their natural counterparts do," Miss Goodwitch explained. "Now use that to give me a more thoughtful answer."

Yang went red a bit, then frowned down at the podium as she thought. "It's… 'cause… fire likes to have a trail to follow? Like a line of gasoline or… or something?"

The professor stayed silent and cocked her head to the side, kinda prompting Yang to keep going.

"So… so if you give it a trail you can control where it goes?" Yang continued. "And… and you didn't want me to push it because… because that's not how you get fire to move. A push comes from behind, and if you try to push fire then it'll end up going the wrong way, like it did for me the first time?"

At that, Professor Goodwitch smiled. "Very good, Miss Xiao-Long. You captured some of the key…" she paused, frowning, "...elements." The look on her face said she hadn't meant to make the joke, but when Yang and Ruby and a couple others laughed, she smiled and took in stride.

She walked back to her lectern and patted Yang on the arm. Yang took that as a signal to go back to her seat, but Miss Goodwitch caught her shoulder to keep her beside her.

"It would be easiest to explain with comparisons," she said, going into Teacher Mode. From her case of Dust floated a red, a dark blue, a dark green, and a light green crystal. "Fire, water, earth, and air. The four base elements. Of them, three of can move." The earth crystal floated off to the side. "Air, in fact, _always_ moves, and likes to do so in a singular track, often in a straight line. Water is the next most mobile, and follows pushes and pulls. In nature, this is gravity. In Dust casting it is your aura. Fire errs closer to earth in that it likes to stay in place _unless_ there is fuel within reach. Again, in our case this fuel is aura. And as Miss Xiao-Long identified, unlike with water, pushing fire with your aura does not work. It will move toward your aura, not away from it. Now did you notice, Miss Xiao-Long, that you were leaving fire behind as you moved the mote around?"

Yang nodded.

"This is because you weren't dropping the aura the you'd used to make the trail. Fire doesn't move so much as it _spreads_. Like air, it will move into new available space to follow fuel, but like earth it will not _leave_ the place it was before if there is still fuel there. Now…" Professor Goodwitch stepped away from the podium again and floated the last Fire crystal above it, "try one more time."

Yang nodded, determined. This time when the little fireball moved, the trail behind it disappeared. It wasn't even and smooth like the professor's had been, some parts of the trail cutting out before the parts behind it had, but it was progress! The fireball moved jerkily still, but in more of a circle than it had before. The end of the attempt came suddenly, though, when the fireball randomly expanded and poofed out in a blink.

"Oops," Yang muttered, giving Miss Goodwitch an apologetic grin. "Think I put too much aura in that part of the trail."

The professor gave her a smile though, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "No worries, Yang. You improved greatly in a short span and you were able to identify your own mistake. That will help you improve more than anything. Did you note any other things that went wrong?"

"Uh, circles are as hard to draw with aura as they are by hand, and, uh… it was hard to cut the trail off right? Like… I don't know, it's hard to control my aura when I'm projecting it, like, out. Or whatever."

"Indeed it is," Professor Goodwitch agreed. "Unfortunately, there are no words or sage advice I can give you there that work better than practice. Continue working on these exercises and your aura control will improve with it. Miss Belladonna, would you like to go next?"

"Not really," Blake murmured even as she stood and walked to the front. As they passed each other, Yang and Blake exchanged a high five, but then Yang continued the swing of her arm and gave Blake an encouraging slap on the butt. Blake yelped in surprise then swatted at Yang's shoulder, her cheeks red with her nervous smile.

When she got up to the lectern her smiled faded but the nervousness amped up.

Ruby sympathized. Being in front of the class _sucked_.

"Your highest affinity is water, I believe?" the professor asked.

Blake nodded.

"Water triiiibe!" Ruby whispered.

Weiss looked at her like she'd just eaten an oatmeal cookie or something.

"This exercise is similar, but we'll be changing the speed instead of keeping it consistent," Professor Goodwitch said.

She demonstrated with a dark blue Dust crystal from her case. The shard turned to water and began spinning in a vertical circle, unlike the horizontal circle from the fire exercise. The circle was a lot wider, too, with not much of a "trail" behind it. When the water reached the top of the circle, it slowed to a stop before then continuing along. It was funny; it kinda looked like the loading circle that scrolls showed when you turned them on.

"Focus on keeping the spread of water even and bringing it to a full stop at the top of the arc." With that, Professor Goodwitch closed her fist and the water above it faded away. Then she sent a crystal over to Blake.

Blake said something quietly enough that Ruby couldn't hear it. It looked like 'alright' or 'okay'. She pinched her little piece of Dust between her fingers, then frowned a bit. "I don't have much practice with Dust, just so you know," she said to nobody in particular. She was probably talking to the professor, but she was just staring at her hands so maybe she was talking to the class?

"Don't worry about that," the professor said, sounding more stern than reassuring. "Most of your classmates don't either."

Blake's eyes flittered to Weiss, then she focused back to her hand. After a second the crystal in her hand exploded in a spray of water. Blake jumped in surprise and lost control of the magic, letting is splash onto the podium before the water faded.

Ruby caught a brief glimpse of Blake's eyes going wide as saucers before Blake threw her hands up to cover her face in embarrassment.

Looking around, Ruby saw Weiss pinching the bridge of her nose in that way she had, and Ruby nudged her with her elbow to get her to relax. Yang was smiling like a big old doofus as she watched her partner, but it seemed to be more an enjoyment of Blake's embarrassed reaction than from the mistake with the Dust.

Cardin and a couple of the other douchenozzles on his team laughed out loud, and the glare Professor Goodwitch gave them didn't shut them up fast enough to stop Blake from drawing her shoulders in and shrinking in on herself.

"Relax," Professor Goodwitch practically ordered. "Plenty of your peers will have similar first tries." She glared over at one of the CRDL kids in particular. Ruby couldn't tell which one.

Blake lowered her hands and her eyes moved towards the table Team RWBY was sitting at, then stopped short, staring around their feet. Ruby was pretty sure she was about to look at Weiss and could imagine what she was thinking.

'_Yeah, most of us are gonna suck, but Weiss is about to go after me and make me look like a clown.'_

Oh gods. Ruby was gonna have to go _after_ Weiss!

D:

"Try that one again," the professor said, floating another crystal over to Blake.

This time Blake turned the crystal into a little ball of water. She kept it floating in place, just kinda lookin' at it for a while.

"Now try moving it in the circles like I demonstrated," Miss Goodwitch gently prompted after a moment.

"Right. Um…" Blake squinted. The ball of water flattened and spread to make the wide base the professor had made, then she set it to start moving up in the circle. When it reached the top it started to slow, but then the front section suddenly fell, splashing down onto wood, then fading.

Blake frowned and turned to the professor blinking in confusion, but Miss Goodwitch nodded toward the water Blake was still manipulating.

"Continue," she said.

After a brief fumble, Blake completed the circle with the water she still had left, though at the bottom of the arc the water kept on moving down and splashed down onto the lectern as the other half just had.

"I… dropped it?" Blake pondered. "Or…"

"I suspect not so much dropped as didn't push the water in a way to keep it from succumbing to gravity," Miss Goodwitch corrected. "When you brought it to a stop at the top of the circle, did you continue pushing up on the water, or did you stop pushing thinking it would stay stationary?"

Blake started nodding, connecting the dots herself. "The second."

The professor nodded back. "Remember that water, like earth and unlike fire and air, is very material and substantive and will be effected by gravity heavily if you let it. Though it is slippery, unlike earth, and thus far easier to drop." She sent another crystal floating over to Blake. "Try again."

This time, Blake managed a slow, shaky circle, shedding a few drops along the way. When she went for the second circle, though, she sent it up too fast and lost control. She let out a "No! Wait, agh!" as she tried to wrangle it back and ended up spraying out into the classroom.

Ruby let out an instinctive yip as she got splashed, but where she and Yang started laughing, Weiss gave a long, loud whine.

"Blaa-aaake!" She started trying to pat dry the spots where the water had splashed on the paper of her notebook. Ruby wasn't even sure why she had it out—she wasn't taking any notes. There wasn't much to 'note' on with this lesson and she knew all this crap anyway.

It also ended up being pointless because the wet splotches on the pages faded away as the water disappeared.

Dust is weird.

Once she got the class to quiet down, Professor Goodwitch sent the third crystal over to Blake. "Don't panic," she said. "It may feel like the Dust is slipping out of your control, but as long as you're using your aura on it, it will follow. So just keep control of your aura."

Blake made a bit of a face at that, like, 'oh sure, that's just super easy', but then nodded and tried again. She made the circle again, still shaky, but managed to keep things under control. She made a second circle. And a th—ah. The water separated and dissipated on the third round.

"Very good, Miss Belladonna," Professor Goodwitch said. She gave a small smile. "You may take your seat now."

"Gah, thank you!" Blake breathed out, rushing back to her seat. Yang gave her a fist bump as she sat back down.

Weiss was already halfway out of her seat when the professor called, "Miss Schnee."

She had a little hop in her step that made her ponytail bounce from side to side as she walked around Ruby and headed up to the front. "Yes, ma'am," she cooed. "And ice is my best affinity."

"Oh, I know," Professor Goodwitch replied coyly. "But I was thinking I'd have you do a demonstration of the earth exercise instead."

Weiss froze. "What? _Why_?"

Three shards of dark green crystal floated out of the case and around the professor's hand. "I'd like to start with the four basic elements, and your team is good for that. Fire,—" she pointed at Yang "—water,—" she pointed at Blake "—and Miss Rose's second highest affinity is air, which I'll have her use as we're not working with gravity Dust today. That just leaves you to do earth."

Wait, was the professor planning on starting with Team RWBY even before Yang got in trouble?

Weiss' feet stayed planted, rooting her in the middle of the classroom. "But earth is my _worst_," she said quietly.

Professor Goodwitch cocked an eyebrow at her. "I imagine you are quite capable of demonstrating Agycyst's Technique regardless," she said, tone making the statement a question at the end.

"Well… yes," Weiss agreed, seemingly stuck between bragging that she was good enough to use earth and wanting to show off with her ice.

When the professor gestured at the podium, Weiss went.

"Technique A?" she asked as a green crystal drifted over to her.

Miss Goodwitch gave her a smile and nod.

The only expression Weiss returned was a flitter of her eyelids that Ruby didn't know how to translate.

Apparently the professor trusted Weiss to do it without an example like she'd given Yang and Blake, which was… pretty cool. Weiss was so awesome and _Ruby's_ partner.

:)

The dust flared green and suddenly became a pillar of compacted earth above Weiss' hand. It cracked in half, the top floating up a bit, then the halves cracked in half and spread apart a bit as well. Then those split in half. Eight thin disks hovered one above the other. They shuffled once, the top four sliding between the bottom four. They pressed together again, seemingly reforming as a whole, then split in half longways. Then again, and again, until there were 8 super tall pie slices. They pulled away from each other, then they spread up and down like they had before along the horizontal slices. Now there were a bunch of tiny floating rock pie slices above Weiss' hand.

Eight and eight. That was sixty-four pie slices!

Now Ruby wanted pie.

The pie slices shuffled around in a pattern Ruby didn't quite follow, then pressed together again, making the cylinder whole. Weiss waved her fingers a little and the earth disintegrated and faded away.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, then Miss Goodwitch approached the lectern, smiling. "Very good, Miss Schnee," she said. She turned to the class. "Note, everyone that you do not have to do the disk shuffle in the middle or the wedge shuffle at the end. That is an advanced form of the exercise and I'm not expecting it from you yet. Though I do encourage you to try, should you be feeling up to it."

Weiss was somehow expressionless and beaming with pride at the same time.

"Focus on making straight splits at exact halves. The rock will fight you. It doesn't want to break, and certainly not in clean lines." The professor turned to Weiss. "No need for you to do it two more times, Miss Schnee. You can take a seat."

Professor Goodwitch gave Weiss a pat on the back, then Weiss headed back to her seat. As she passed, Ruby raised her hand to hive her partner a high five. Weiss stopped, looked confused for a moment, then realized what was happening and smiled, slapping Ruby's hand softly.

'_Cute little dingus,'_ Ruby thought.

"Yes, Miss Xiao-Long?" the professor said. Ruby looked over to see her sister had raised her hand.

"I don't get it. Weiss has, like, five percent affinity with earth. H—"

"_Eight_," Weiss corrected haughtily, though Ruby wasn't really sure how that distinction mattered.

"Whatever," Yang said, waving a hand at her. "How can she be _that_ good with earth Dust?"

Miss Goodwitch nodded. "A good question. Obviously, she has a lot of practice with Dust, but there's more to it. Does anybody else know the answer to Miss Xiao-Long's question?"

Weiss started raising her ha—

"Other than Miss Schnee," the professor added.

Weiss lowered her hand with a grumpy grunt.

After a moment, Pyrrha raised her hand.

"Yes! Miss Nikhos."

Folding her hands in front of her (looking very Weissy, in Ruby's opinion), Pyrrha answered. "Having a low affinity with an element doesn't mean you're bad with it. It just means it takes more power and control for you to achieve the results that someone with a high affinity would. These exercises don't require a lot of power, and, well, I suppose Weiss just has enough control over her aura that she can do stuff like _that_ even with a super low affinity."

"It's not _that_ low," Weiss muttered.

"It kinda is," Blake grinned.

"Precisely, Miss Nikhos," Miss Goodwitch said. "This is why the most important thing for you all to master is controlling your aura. Now, in battle it is always better to use Dust you have a high affinity for. It will cost you less power and concentration to enact powerful effects, letting you save aura and focus on the things happening around you. But learning how to use Dust you aren't good with in safe situations like this will help you improve your aura control immensely."

"Pretty sure the most important thing for us to master is learning the best spots to punch all the Grimm," Yang quipped.

"Or super awesome scythe techniques!" Ruby added.

The professor gave them unimpressed glares. "Miss Rose, it's your turn."

'_Crap.'_

That familiar anxiously stage fright feeling settled over Ruby's shoulders and knotted up her stomach. Everyone was looking at her now.

She spared a glance down at her knees. They looked normal, not bee-like in any way.

That was something, at least.

Ruby walked to the front, mentally preparing herself for doing something embarrassing and bad with the Dust she was about to get handed. At least Blake had splashed people, so Ruby wouldn't be the first big goof up.

Professor Goodwitch demonstrated. A light green crystal above her hand seemed to disintegrate, the pieces flaking off like one of those really fast erosion-over-time videos until there wasn't any left. A ball of faintly green-tinted wind spun in a sphere around where it had been. It stayed like that for a few seconds, then Miss Goodwitch raised her other hand, palm up, and sent the ball of air across to that hand. It stayed there for a few seconds, then the green winds slowed to a stop, then reversed, spinning in the other direction. She then sent the ball of air back over to her first palm, kept it there for a second, then flexed her fingers and dissipated the magic air.

She looked over at Ruby. "Ready?"

"Yep!" Ruby reflexively chirped, despite not being ready at all. She hadn't used Dust much at all. It was expensive and Dad had told her that he'd paid a lot of money for Crescent Rose's creation and that she should spend her time practicing with her to make that investment worth it. Which was totally awesome, 'cause Crescent Rose was the best!

It just sucked a little bit right now when she had to be a wizard in front of a class of peers.

'_C'mon, Ruby, you can do this. You basically just have to play catch with yourself. With a magical ball of air. It's literally windball! But completely different!'_

When the light green crystal came to a stop above the podium in front of her, Ruby decided to just jump into it. If she was gonna mess up, might as well get it over with.

She extended her aura from her palm and shoved it onto the crystal and… nothing happened. Her aura was caught outside the Dust, but it was supposed to be insi…

Oh, duh. It needed to attune to her.

The Dust was tiny so the attunement took less then a second, and when it completed Ruby felt her aura rush into the crystal. It triggered the dormant magic of the Dust and—

And it burst in a quick poof of green air.

Crap.

Ruby could feel the air spreading out through her aura that was getting carried along with it. The wind pressed out in every direction, poofing in Ruby's face, and spread out too quickly. By the time Ruby had recovered from the surprise and was able to try to control the air with her aura instead of letting this happen the other way around, it was spread too thin. She couldn't exert her will on her aura or the air that was attached to it.

Too far from its source and with no continuous supply, the aura faded away after a moment and took the wind with it.

"Looks like you pulled a Blake," Yang teased her.

"A what?!" Blake squeaked. "Nonono, that's _not_ becoming a thing."

Ruby frowned a bit. "I meant to do that," she said, joking to distract from how embarrassing that was.

"Well that would be troubling, considering that's not what I asked you to do," Professor Goodwitch said.

Ruby blanched, but… The words were intimidating, but her tone was light. Ruby wasn't quite sure if she was playing into the joke, but it felt like it. She had a bit of a resting grumpy face so it was hard to tell, and Ruby wasn't used to whatever little tells she had the way she'd gotten familiar with some Weiss'.

"After a moment's consideration, I've realized I did not, in fact, mean to do that," Ruby decided.

"A wise realization," the professor remarked, still completely deadpan. "Go ahead and redo that one." She floated another crystal to Ruby. "Don't _push_ your aura into the crystal to attune. It's small enough you can just surround it with your aura to do that, and you won't trigger it accidentally like that."

"Okay," Ruby said. "Thanks."

It was weird and difficult to not push her aura out. By default the aura she extended beyond her body wanted to snap back to her, and finding the balance for how hard to press it out to keep it in place around the crystal without just shoving it away from her was… tricky.

She managed it, though, and after a moment she felt the resistance of the crystal give way, her aura filling in the space that was previously inaccessible. It felt funny. Her aura was filling the area in and around the Dust like nothing was there, but her aura felt ever so slightly different in the crystal-shaped area of the Dust. Like if the middle of her hand was getting hit by a light breeze but the rest of it wasn't.

Weird.

Ruby formed a bubble of aura around the crystal and started spinning it in a circle, adding more force to the aura to get the Dust to start triggering. She meant to only add a tiny bit of power and keep building until the Dust triggered, but her control wasn't good enough and she ended up putting more into it than she'd meant to. The whole crystal shattered and the pieces began spinning around in the sphere she'd created, quickly disintegrating until there was nothing but the tinted winds flying around in Ruby's hand.

Not as clean as the professor's erosiony start, but still decent. Unintentionally, some air flowed down the line of aura connecting Ruby's hand to the sphere, reached her hand, and spread along the aura that Ruby was projecting around herself.

Woops. Ruby cut the line. Now the aura ball was suspended outside herself, though she could still feel the aura and exert her will on it. Which felt _weird_.

This was all weird.

Ruby took a second to marvel at how incredible it was that she was holding a magic ball of air in her hand. There were kids out there in college classes doing dumb stuff like algebra and calculus and… other fancy maths, and Ruby got to play with freaking _magic_ instead.

Being a huntress was awesome.

She raised her right hand. She summoned more aura above her left hand and tried to press it against the aura ball to push it over to her right hand...

And messed something up.

The spinning stopped and all of the wind slammed in the opposite direction Ruby was pushing it, then followed the push, rushing back the other way. A few thin gusts escaped riding lines of aura that Ruby wasn't able to keep contained, but the rest hit the edge of her aura-sphere and then rebounded, then tried to follow her push again and slammed back into the edge, creating a weird spinning current at the edge of the sphere that Ruby didn't intend.

She pulled back and tried to reset to the spinning ball she had before. A few more licks of wind flew out of the sphere because Ruby was losing her hold on her aura. She was panicking and her control was suffering for it. Eventually one of the threads of loose wind was big and forceful enough that it led most of the magical air with it. Ruby was left with a ball of air a quarter the size of her original as the rest spread out across the room.

"Durn it," she muttered, dropping her aura sphere and letting it all go.

"Don't try to push the air," Miss Goodwitch told her, floating another crystal over to her. "The flow of air will move from low aura to high aura densities. If you try to push air it will move in the wrong direction first. Keep the sphere of your aura spinning and _lead_ it towards your other hand. Then, when it's close enough, reach out with aura from your right hand and pull the sphere to it with that connection."

Okay, that made sense. But how to 'lead the sphere'? Maybe just… make the side of the sphere a bit denser with aura and just kinda… pull it along?

That sounded right.

Ruby started again, getting herself to the spinny sphere state pretty quickly. This time, though, instead of pushing the ball with more aura, she just shifted the aura that was already in the ball to be a bit heavier on the right side. It was difficult considering the aura was also spinning around in circles, so she had to be extra attentive to making the _area_ denser instead of specific flows of aura, 'cause then they'd just spin around and just make the ball of wind dance around.

She managed it, though and the right edge of the wind sphere moved towards her right hand. It took Ruby a moment to realize, though, that the left side wasn't moving, and now she had a big elongated weird looking thingy instead of her perfect sphere. She stopped moving the air forward and focused on moving the back edge up to make the sphere again.

It looked a bit wonky, but Ruby got the sphere over to her right hand by moving the sides of the sphere one at a time like that 'cause she couldn't really focus on moving both at the same time. It was too hard to densify (that's a word, right?) her aura on one side and pull the aura on the other side at the same time.

So it ended up looking like a goofy earthworm—or airworm, rather, hehehe—that slithered from one hand to the other instead of the nice smooth ball movement that the professor had, but… hey, end result was the same!

When she managed to get the sphere all set up over her right hand, she looked up at Weiss, then at Professor Goodwitch, smiling.

"I did it!" she chirped.

She wasn't sure why she was proud of accomplishing something so lame—it was just moving a ball, like, two feet, and she hadn't even moved it right—but after how much it had taken to figure it out, she felt pretty good to have managed it.

The professor smiled at her. "Good job. Now, can you reverse the spin in the sphere and send it back?"

Right. There was still more.

'_Ugh, this exercise is hard.'_

Ruby reversed the direction of her au—

The ball of air fricking exploded. Ruby felt the air stop spinning and just slam into the edges of the sphere in all directions, hard enough that her control of her aura slipped. The result was one big _whoosh_ as the air bubble popped, wind blowing in Ruby's face and making her squint while it rustled the pages of her team's notebooks.

"Hm," she said while Yang and a few others laughed.

Professor Goodwitch just used Ruby's embarrassment as a teaching moment, though. "Don't try to immediately change the direction of the air," she said. "While your aura is malleable and able to change direction on a dime, air does not like doing so. It can turn, but to reverse like we're doing here you need to slow the air down enough that it won't protest the change of direction." She sent a fourth crystal to Ruby. "One more try," she said.

This attempt went pretty much the same as the last one. Making the sphere was easy, she inched the airworm over to her other hand, and while this time she managed to slow the wind down a bit before the reverse, she was still too fast and the ball of air still popped. Less violently, but still popped.

Ruby pouted.

"None of that now," Miss Goodwitch said, walking over and putting a hand on her shoulder. "This is why we practice. Very good job, Miss Rose."

Ruby smiled at her and went back to her seat where Weiss gave her a smile and Yang gave her a fist bump across their partners.

"Now before we continue on with the rest of you, I want to introduce you to some of the calculations that are applicable to these exercises. I'm not expecting you to do the math while you're using Dust—even _I_ don't do that—but understanding the mathematical relationship between Dust, aura, and affinity is incredibly useful for helping you figure out how to manipulate Dust and how to diagnose mistakes when your casting goes wrong. Let's start with some rules for air Dust that Miss Rose just showcased."

Ruby perked up a bit at her name, but she'd started losing interest in what the professor was saying and wasn't paying too much attention anymore. It was all mathy and boring.

"There is an equation for the rate at which air Dust moves from low to high density aura… blah blah blah…"

Time to doodle.

She hadn't even completed General Flappy-Feet's head when Weiss elbowed her.

"_Pay attention!_" she hissed.

Ruby gave her a groan in response.

"You want to do wind slashes, don't you?" Weiss whispered at her.

"Uh… yeah?" Ruby sat up a bit.

"Then _pay attention_. What she's talking about right now will help you be able to do th—"

"Miss Schnee, is there something you want to share with the class?" Professor Goodwitch asked super loudly and kinda angrily.

Weiss froze. If she could get any paler, she probably would have. "N-no, ma'am. I'm sorry."

Crap. Ruby couldn't let Weiss get in trouble because of her!

"She was just telling me to pay attention, Professor," she confessed. "Don't be mad at her."

"Mm. I don't like having to repeat myself, Miss Rose."

"I know. I'm sorry. Could you go back a little bit?" If what Weiss had said was true about these weird magic maths being the formula for windslashes, Ruby needed to learn it.

"How far?" Miss Goodwitch asked tiredly.

"Uh… I kinda tuned you out after you said 'equation'," Ruby answered, turning red with embarrassment and nervousness before she'd even finished her sentence.

The unimpressed glare she got from the professor was entirely expected, as was the laughter that erupted from the students.

"There is an _equation_!" Professor Goodwitch repeated loudly, smacking the board with her crop on the last word to point to where she'd written out a super long equation with more letters than numbers. "For calculating the rate that air will move from areas of low aur density to areas of high aura density. It is logarithmic, so the higher the difference, the faster the movement. If you take…"

Ruby went back to her notebook, but left her doodle off to the side and got started on taking notes. From the corner of her eye she saw Weiss look over at her.

They shared a smile and Weiss gave her a happy shoulder bump.

* * *

**Hey guys, I'm really sorry for the huge delay for this chapter. Lost some of my writing steam for a bit and also got caught up in another project. Mostly got stuck b/c I wasn't sure how I wanted to proceed with this story. I know how things will end and I know most of the things that will happen in the middle, but I'm still putting together the order of things and figuring out how to get to where I want to go. **

**I hope you enjoy this chapter and I'll have the next one out within a couple weeks, promise. **


	39. Squall 4-2

For some reason, Weiss woke up this morning in an awful mood. She had bad mornings sometimes, usually after unpleasant dreams, which is what she suspected happened today. It was hard to be sure, though, as the dream was fading away from her before she'd even fully woken up. It was… Winter had been in it, although that itself wouldn't make it unpleasant. There was… a conflict? A fight? She couldn't remember if it was a physical fight or a verbal one, or who it was between… Was Father there? That would probably explain the queasy feeling she had.

When Ruby decided not to get up to run with Weiss this morning, the disappointment Weiss felt was… confusing. And it compounded on her bad mood, made her kind of angry. It was Thursday. They'd only been running together for three days and already Ruby was quitting on her.

No discipline.

So Weiss ran alone. It felt… empty. Less. Over the past couple days Ruby had gotten over her need to try to outrace Weiss at the start and they'd fallen into a rhythm together, running side by side. Ruby tended to fall a little bit behind at the end of the second lap, but then completely destroyed Weiss on the third when they were using aura.

Which was definitely annoying. If there was an upside to Ruby being a lazy bum today it was that Weiss didn't have to deal with that frustration.

Though it also meant she didn't have a metric to compete against.

Sure enough, when she finished her third lap today she wasn't nearly as winded and jelly-legged as she'd gotten the past few days. She hadn't pushed herself hard enough. Hadn't found that 110% that she discovered when trying to catch up to Ruby.

Her anger came back. She knew that it wasn't Ruby's responsibility to make her train better, but she still felt… cheated.

'_Bah!'_

When she got back to the room, Ruby and the other two were all still asleep. She stomped her way into the bathroom, making more noise than necessary. Maybe the noise would make it clear to Ruby that Weiss was upset and make her feel guilty for bailing. And if not, well maybe she deserved a little discomfort.

A little vindictive, perhaps, but… Weiss was mad and didn't really know what to do about it.

Now she felt angry for being angry. Her mood was going in an irritable circle. What was going on with her?

She'd gone to bed late, having stayed up to print out and go through Winter's tactical playbook with Ruby. Maybe she was just tired.

She brushed her teeth, cleaned her face, showered, unlocked the door, and then headed into the closet. She took her time getting dressed, delaying the process to the point she was just standing there in her underwear waiting to here the bathroom door open and for Ruby to start showering.

After almost ten minutes of just loitering and fiddling with her jewelry box, Weiss had to accept that it was time to just get dressed. The disappointment she felt was uncomfortable and she didn't like it, but… she'd gotten used to picking outfits with Ruby in the morning.

'_Fuck.'_

She was getting too used to having Ruby around.

She dressed, picking her outfit mechanically, so checked out she'd almost walked out of the closet when she realized she was wearing the wrong shoes.

Maybe she needed a nap.

Back in the room, Blake was now up, sitting at her desk in her pajamas and yawning as she flipped through the twenty-two page binder that Weiss had put together for her and Ruby had left on her desk. One binder for each of them, twenty-two pages of Winter's formations and tactics and callouts defined in detail. A treasure, really.

The version that Winter had given Weiss was written with specifics for her old, now-dead team, so it needed some tailoring for Team RWBY, but Ruby and Weiss were both excited about that kind of project. It was… kind of depressing reading the sections Winter had written out for her individual teammates knowing that they had all died in front of her, but… Weiss didn't know what to do with those emotions. She wanted to run to Winter and give her a hug, though neither of them had ever really been huggers.

Winter had apparently made another version after she became a military officer that was tailored to army squads, assigning roles and describing behaviour for soldiers, medics, mechs, and other non-huntress units, but she felt her old one would help Weiss' team more.

Yang was awake too, laying in bed and looking over at Ruby. Kinda weird, but whatever.

Ruby was facing the wall, so Weiss couldn't tell if she was awake. She wanted her friend, though, so she hopped up to hang off the edge of the bunk and gave Ruby's shoulder a shake.

"Ruby, you up?"

Silence prevailed for long enough that Weiss was about to give up and step down when Ruby gave a quiet, "Mmhmm."

'_Uh…'_

This was weird and very un-Ruby-like.

"You okay?" Weiss asked.

"... 'm fine."

What… what was wrong? Clearly something, but Weiss had no idea what to do. Did Weiss make her mad? Was that why she didn't want to run or choose outfits or even turn around and look at Weiss right now?

Weiss ran back through their conversation last night. It… end fine enough. They'd played some chess after dinner—something they'd been doing since Monday and was actually a lot of fun. Ruby gave names to all her pieces {a wide range of names like naming her queen Ruby, white bishop Weiss, queen-side knight Blake, and queen-side rook Yang, to naming her king after her dog, Zwei, and her pawns after something called a Twitch emote. Then she'd acted out dramatically goofy fight scenes whenever a piece was taken. It made the two games they'd played last night take the time of three or four normal games, but it was amusing. Then they'd gotten back to reading through Winter's manual. There was… Weiss had nagged Ruby a bit about it being time to sleep because Ruby was too excited reading through the formations to actually get some rest. Maybe Weiss' nagging had annoyed her? Although that was more or less a normal part of the day, as Ruby never really wanted to go to sleep. There wasn't anything special about yesterday's instance.

Didn't track.

"Weiss," Yang said behind her. Weiss turned to find Yang swinging down from her bunk and gesturing Weiss back. Something in her expression was sad and tired—and not in a 'she needs sleep' way.

Something was wrong.

Yang stepped up to where Weiss had been hang and reached around Ruby to give her an awkward hug.

"Hey, cookie monster," she said softly.

"... Mmm."

"Want me to go get you some cookies for breakfast?"

Through the gap under Yang's arm, Weiss saw Ruby nod.

"Whatchu want? Chocolate chip? Sugar? White chocolate?"

Ruby was quiet for a moment—which was ultra weird on its own considering they were talking about cookies. "All of them?" she decided quietly.

Yang grinned and kissed the side of her head. "You got it, Cap'n."

She hopped down and nodded for Weiss and Blake to follow her out to the hallway.

"Is she okay?" Blake whispered before the door had even closed behind them.

Yang shook her head. "Today's…" She trailed off, pissing Weiss off. There was something bothering her partner and Weiss needed to know.

"Today's _what_?" Weiss demanded, the harshness and volume in her tone a jarring disconnect from the hushed conversation of earlier.

Yang gave her a glare, like 'pipe down', then continued. "Today's the anniversary of the day Dad and Uncle Qrow told us Mom wasn't coming home. That monsters got her."

Ever wounded, resentful, spiteful feeling Weiss had felt for her friend reared up and slapped her in the face. Why had the idea she landed on for why Ruby didn't want to spend time with her that Ruby was being petty over some slight? Of _course_ that wasn't what was going on. This was _Ruby_.

The reality was so much worse. Weiss wanted to run back in the room and apologize for every angry thought she'd just had and for slamming the door and for—

"She's gonna be pretty down today," Yang continued, seeing that Weiss and Blake were both speechless. "And nothing you say or do can pull her out of her funk. Believe me, Dad and I have tried everything. Just… let her be quiet and sad. And _do not_, under _any_ circumstances, ask her about Mom. No 'what was she like?' or any of that crap. She'll smile and be totally normal and then wander off alone and sob for hours." Yang turned to walk away, then turned back. "That might end up happening anyway, but don't make it a sure thing."

"This sounds—"

"What do we do?" Blake cut Weiss off. She paused, though, and looked at Weiss apologetically.

Weiss waved for her to continue, mostly because she wasn't sure what she wanted to say. '_This sounds unhealthy,'_ maybe. Like they needed something to help Ruby… find peace? Or something? Instead of just avoiding the issue and hoping she didn't break.

But then again, what the hell did Weiss know about coping with the death of a loving mother?

Blake continued. "We're… bringing her cookies to eat breakfast in bed. Are we supposed to, like, baby her today?"

Yang shook her head. "No, just be normal. Don't call attention to her quietness. I'm just getting her cookies 'cause… well, 'cause it makes _me _feel better."

Weiss was about to comment that that wasn't really a priority when she caught herself.

Ruby wasn't the only one that lost a mother on this anniversary.

"You doing okay?" she asked. It seemed like an appropriate question. And she did want to make sure Yang was okay.

"I'm… yeah, I'm fine," Yang said, the pause the only thing betraying that she might be lying. "I learned to cope with moms disappearing on me a while ago."

The bitterness in her tone said that maybe she hadn't, really.

Blake leaned in and hugged Yang's arm as they walked. A silence spanned a little while as they all tried to figure out what they should say next, if anything. Weiss wasn't sure she was qualified to give any opinions on any of this. She wanted to help her friends feel better and she was willing to follow Yang's lead on how to do that.

"And tonight's gonna be fucking rough," Yang added, breaking the silence.

"The night terrors," Weiss remembered.

"Mmhmm."

"Night terrors?" Blake asked.

"She has nightmares about Mom getting torn up by Grimm," Yang explained to her partner, her tone so tired and depressed it made Weiss' heart twist. "Used to be a lot, now it mostly only happens on anniversaries, like today or on Mom's birthday."

"... Oh."

Weiss stopped. "I'll go keep an eye on her. You guys get her cookies."

Yang nodded as Weiss turned and headed back to the room. Inside, Ruby was still laying in bed, back to the room.

Should Weiss talk to her? Go… sit up there with her or something, let her know she had support? Yang had said to act normal, but… what was normal with things like this? Normal would have Ruby bouncing around the room right now and Weiss would be trying to wrangle her in and get her to do homework or read textbook assignments. So…

'_Maybe I should read our History textbook to her,'_ Weiss joked to herself. She wiped the grin off her face immediately, though. Now wasn't the time for jokes.

After standing in the middle of the room for who knows how long internally debating, Weiss decided 'Screw it'. Weiss didn't have any idea what 'acting normal' in this situation was even supposed to look like, so she abandoned that plan. She climbed up to Ruby's bunk and sat herself down behind the small of Ruby's back, folding her legs under her with her feet hanging off the edge of the bed.

She had no idea how anybody could _sleep_ in a top bunk. This was so… ugh.

Ruby was just laying there, curled up on her side, eyes half open as she blinked slowly at the wall. She didn't react to Weiss' arrival.

"Hey," Weiss greeted her partner.

"Mm," Ruby said, not turning.

This was so off. Before now, Weiss hadn't realized how much she'd gotten used to making eye contact with Ruby when they were talking to each other, and now she felt so off kilter not seeing those big silver sparkles.

"So I was thinking about what we could do while Yang and Blake are futzing around training Emerald…" Weiss started.

Ruby stayed silent. It almost made Weiss wince.

"So we're gonna be in a park, right?" Weiss continued. At this point she sort of felt like she was just talking to herself, but… she'd done that a few times before when she was feeling particularly lonely at home after Winter left. No big deal to do it now. "I figure we could do, like, a picnic. We could get some nice takeout—maybe some nice deli sandwiches or something—and have a little picnic off on the side while they do whatever it is they're doing. And I could bring a case of Dust and we could work on those exercises some more."

"... Mkay."

Ruby's lack of enthusiasm was physically painful. She should be jumping up and down right now, delighted at the idea of a picnic. Even knowing what was wrong, Weiss couldn't ignore the whisper in the back of her mind telling her that Ruby just didn't want her around. It was a familiar voice, the same one that told her that Winter left home to get away from her, the same one that told her that her parents' falling out was her fault, the same one that told her Whitley hated her because he blamed her for their family's state as much as she did.

Klein told her that voice is an idiot, but Weiss had never been able to fully agree. It had to be here, though, because… because she _knew_ why Ruby was so sad right now and it had nothing to do with Weiss.

In a stupid, self-centered way, it kind of hurt that Weiss wasn't able to pull Ruby out of her funk. Apparently their friendship wasn't strong enough to fill the mom-shaped void in Ruby's hurt.

Weiss mentally kicked herself as soon as that thought flitted through her head. It was so incomprehensibly stupid for her to be trying to compete with a dead woman—especially Ruby's _mother_.

'_Stupid_.'

"We could also bring the chess set," Weiss added. That seemed like an appropriately picnicy activity.

"... That would be fun," Ruby agreed quietly. She turned and looked at Weiss and gave a small smile.

Weiss beamed back at her and reached over to give Ruby's shoulder a squeeze, feeling ridiculously triumphant for managing to get such a small reaction.

Ruby turned back to the wall and Weiss stayed where she was, arm draped across Ruby's side, rubbing the girl's shoulder with her thumb.

"How long do you think it will take for Yang to learn all the roles and formations in Winter's playbook?" Weiss asked. Cracking a joke and making it a question would probably pull Ruby more into the conversation.

"She'll get it," Ruby stated simply. "She's smert."

"Mm. What do you think Professor Rustheart will have us do today?" He'd implied a spar of some sort, though Weiss wasn't sure with whom.

Ruby just shrugged and hummed an 'I don't know'.

Shutting down again. Maybe that was okay? Weiss liked quiet company, though Ruby usually gave her the company without the quiet. Maybe now was the time for it.

They just sat there in silence for a few minutes. Weiss passed the time tracing random shapes over her thigh with her fingernail while she absent-mindedly rubbed Ruby's shoulder with her other hand.

Suddenly, without any prompt or change in the situation, Ruby rolled over, sat up, and wrapped her arms around Weiss in a tight hug, burying her face in Weiss' back just above her left shoulderblade.

Weiss froze, caught off guard by the sudden change. Should she say something? Do something? If Ruby was doing this it meant Weiss had done something right, and she'd been being quiet, so maybe she should stay that way.

She opted to continue staying silent and reached up to rub her hand along Ruby's forearm where one was wrapped across her chest, just continuing to give soft physical comfort like she'd been rubbing Ruby's shoulder.

Ruby let out a long, deep breath into Weiss' back and Weiss could _feel _her relax.

Okay, so Weiss was on the right track.

They stayed like that for over a minute when Yang and Blake returned, each carrying a stack of plates. There were upside down plates covering right side up plates, making plate 'ufos' that presumably had food inside. There were several smells coming from them, the scent of bacon powerful enough that it obscured the other ones.

"I got cook—!" Yang stopped and blinked in surprise at the scene that greeted her. "Oh, hey," she said, looking at Weiss because Ruby's face was hidden from her view.

Weiss lifted her hand in a small wave, not wanting to disturb Ruby's peace by jostling her.

"We got you some cookies and bacon, Ruby," Yang restarted, setting down one of the 'ufos' onto Ruby's desk and taking off the top plate to reveal a stack of what looked like a dozen cookies next to a couple strips of bacon. She then placed the other ufo she was carrying on Weiss' desk. "And Weiss, they had fruit salad today and we got you some." She took the top plate off to reveal a fruit salad mix of what looked like sliced banana, cantaloupe, apple, and grapes with yogurt mixed in.

"Oh wow, thank you." Weiss wasn't expecting that and she was immensely grateful. She hadn't registered her hunger until she saw the food.

Yang gave her a funny look. "Of course, silly. You two wanna come down?"

Gently, Weiss patted the back of one of Ruby's hand to silently repeat the question.

After letting out a long groan, Ruby nodded into Weiss' back and pulled away.

Weiss summoned a couple of grey glyphs below her and used them as stair steps down from the bunk. She left them there in case Ruby wanted to use them too, but instead Ruby just rolled off her bed and fell to the floor.

The fall was too fast for Weiss to even shout in time, but her panic felt like a zap of electricity shot down her spine. Ruby slipped into her semblance just before she hit the ground, though, and bounced off the floor in a spray of petals.

"Ruby!" Weiss shrieked, stepping forward to jab Ruby in the ribcage with a toe when she popped back into reality. "Don't do that! You scared the crap out of me!"

From where she was now laying on her back on the floor, Ruby stuck her tongue out at Weiss, then pushed herself up to her feet. She grabbed her cloak from where it was hanging on a bedpost and wrapped it around herself, then shuffled over to her desk. She gave Yang a long hug that Yang returned with enough strength that Weiss was worried her partner might just pop. When her sister finally released her, Ruby plopped down in her chair and started nibbling on one of her cookies.

"I love you, kiddo," Yang said, ruffling Ruby's hair.

"Love you, too," Ruby mumbled through her cookie.

It seemed Yang was pretty bad at her own 'act normal' advice too.

On the other two desks, Blake unloaded her two stacks of plates with her and Yang's breakfast, Yang's a pancake folded in half (with half of a second pancake stacked on top) to fit alongside her typical pile of bacon and eggs and Blake's was the other half of Yang's second pancake and some bacon and fruit salad.

"You shouldn't have gotten so much food," Weiss said. "I was gonna get us some food for a picnic while we're out at the park."

Yang blinked down at her pile of food. "Oh, woops. Alright, I won't eat too much."

"I'll go get us some forks and knives," she said, slipping out of the room.

With Ruby focused on the plate in front of her, Yang raised a questioning eyebrow at Weiss.

Weiss had no idea what Yang was trying to communicate and raised an eyebrow back at her.

Yang nodded at Ruby, then jerked her head the other way.

'_...What?'_

Rolling her eyes, Yang pointed over at Ruby's bunk (probably what she'd been trying to indicate with the jerk of her head), then pantomimed a hug.

'_Oh.'_

Ruby noticed the commotion going on in her peripheral vision and turned to look at her sister. Yang quickly moved from pantomiming a hug to just crossing her arms.

"Sup?" she said.

Ruby frowned at her like Yang was a total weirdo (fair), then went back to her cookies.

Yang turned back to Weiss and raised a hand up, non-verbally asking "what the heck?"

Weiss shrugged.

Yang didn't seem to want to take that for an answer, though, because she kept gesturing inarticulately for some sort of explanation.

What the hell kind of answer did Yang even want right now? Was Weiss supposed to sign language a response? She didn't know how and she very much doubted Yang would understand it if she did.

After a couple annoying seconds of Yang being a monkey at her, Weiss had had enough.

"Yang, stop trying to lick Ruby's ear!"

"What?!" Yang jumped.

Ruby turned to give Yang a grossed out face, leaning away.

"I didn't do that!" Yang bursted out.

"Why are you so weird, Yang?" Ruby asked in a tone that made it more of a statement that a question.

"But I didn't do it!"

Ruby shook her head disapprovingly and turned back to her cookies.

Glaring, Yang shook her fist at Weiss, then drew a finger across her throat, then made a V with her index and middle fingers and pointed at her eyes, then at Weiss. Apparently she couldn't decide which pantomime threat to settle on.

Weiss bit her bottom lip to keep from cackling.

When Blake came back, they all ate their breakfast together. Weiss was tempted to ask how they were allowed to take plates from the cafeteria, but… it didn't really matter and she didn't really care. The older three talked, each of them tentatively trying to pull Ruby into the conversation in various ways to no real avail. Ruby was just defaulting to monosyllabic responses or shrugs.

A couple hours later they were all showered, dressed, armed, and packed, sitting together in a towncar Weiss had called and riding over to Vale City Park where they were meeting Emerald. Weiss did not at all approve of Yang's determination to try to get Emerald into Beacon, and she wasn't even going to participate in their training, but she'd still be there with her team because… well, because.

They were dropped off at the edge of the park—which was _huge_. A massive expanse of green in the middle of the city, wide enough that Weiss could barely make out the skyscrapers on the far side of the park. A sidewalk ran the perimeter, with several more spidering across the hills and through the trees creating trails for visitors to walk. Here and there, statues, monuments, and other points of interest dotted the landscape, giving people something to admire and congregate around.

Weiss handed the blanket, Dust case, and chess set she'd brought with her to Ruby for her to set up wherever Yang decided was a good place to train and split from the group to pick up some food from one of the restaurants nearby rimming the park.

Unlike this morning, Weiss was glad for the alone time. She used the solitude to relax her composure and stop hiding the rollercoaster of emotions this morning had brought. Though now most of what she was feeling was… tired and confused. This thing with Ruby was not something she'd ever been educated or trained for.

She rubbed at her temples and tried to breathe her frustrations out her nose as she waited in line at a deli that looked rustic and smelled delicious. The line extended out the door, dozens of people here to enjoying the park in the nice morning weather. Some people gave her funny looks when they noticed the sword hanging from her hip, but Weiss paid them no mind. There was a chalkboard by the door with the stores menu handwritten on it and Weiss sent a picture of it to her team to get their orders while she waited.

When she got closer to the front of the line, she almost turned around and ran to another restaurant. The cashier and at least three of the cooks that were visible in the back were faunus.

'_Why are there so many damn faunus working in the food industry? Everywhere I go there's an animal making my food.'_

It was so tempting to leave and find an establishment with actual hiring standards, but… she'd already told her team what she was getting. They'd given her their orders. If she left and went somewhere else she'd need to explain why, and when she did Blake would… and Yang would… even Ruby would be mad. She could try lying, but she was pretty bad at that. Always had been.

No, she'd just have to… to deal with this. They couldn't be that bad; there were so many people here getting this food, it must be good despite the... unsavory nature of the cooks.

She ordered, avoiding eye contact with the cashier. While she waited for her name to be called, she sat as far away from the handoff plane as possible. And when she left with her order, she did so in a hurry.

It was when she got outside that she realized the distraction of the faunus made her forget to buy Ruby a couple of the cookies. She mentally kicked herself as she dialed her partner.

"Hey, Weiss," Ruby said, her tone flat and missing the classic Ruby cheer.

"Hey, where'd you guys set up?"

"Um, a bit aways from the Vytal War Memorial. If you're on the path where we got dropped off and take the first left you'll find it."

"Okay, on my way with chips and sandwiches. And lemonade."

"Cool, thanks."

The line clicked, the end of the call so abrupt it gave Weiss whiplash and made that voice in the back of her head grow louder.

'_She's not mad at you, idiot,'_ she told herself again. '_Shut up, voice.'_

She followed Ruby's directions and found the memorial after about twelve minutes of walking, a tall obelisk made of alternating bricks of white and black stone. Over a dozen people milled around it, families and couples posing for photos or standing around talking. About a hundred feet away, Weiss could make out the silhouette of Ruby's cloak under a large, wide tree, Yang and Blake walking around a little bit behind it.

"This is a nice spot," Weiss said when she made her way over to Ruby's side.

Ruby was sitting on the picnic blanket, back against the tree, Crescent Rose propped up beside her as she watched Yang and Blake, who were taking turns swinging their fists and swords around. Showing each other forms or something? The Dust case and chessboard were stacked next to Ruby. A corner of the blanket was folded over and Weiss took a second to walk over and fix it because she knew if she let that sit there it would make her brain itch.

"Blake picked it," Ruby said as Weiss set paper bag full of sandwiches and drink tote with four large lemonades down on the now fixed blanket corner.

Weiss sat down next to Ruby and hugged her knees to her chest like her friend was. "Does Yang know when that girl is getting here?"

"Dunno."

"Mm. Did you want your sandwich?"

"Not yet. Can I have da lemonade, though?" Ruby reached a hand out toward it and opened and closed it repeatedly.

"Sure." It was nice to see Ruby showing signs of life. Weiss crawled over to grab two of the lemonades, handing one to Ruby.

Ruby took a sip and puckered up in a sour face that made Weiss laugh.

Personally, Weiss loved it. It was just the right mix of sweet and sour, and it was ice cold.

"Hey, Blake and Idiot!" she called to the other two. "Your lemonade's here if you want it!"

Yang turned and gave her a thumbs up and Blake waved an acknowledgement, then said something to Yang. Whatever she said, it made Yang give her a playful glare and the next thing Weiss knew the two of them were running around like schoolchildren playing tag. Yang was trying to tackle Blake and Blake was skipping about with her semblance and just general acrobatics, whipping out the physics-defying ribbon from Gambol Shroud to try to trip up her partner, laughing all the while.

It was a rare event where Weiss felt her most mature team member was Ruby, but that's where they were right now.

Ruby had a small smile on her face as she watched her sister and Blake frolick around, occasionally taking small sips of her lemonade and sour-facing after every one.

"Want to play some chess?" Weiss asked her.

Ruby nodded.

Weiss scooched around, patting down the blanket where it got scrunched up, and situated herself in front of Ruby, setting up the chessboard between them. Her back was to Blake and Yang now, but she didn't really mind that. They were just being children now and Weiss didn't really care to watch whatever they were going to do when the homeless girl got here.

Ruby just quietly sat there, eyes switching between the scene of idiocy behind Weiss to Weiss' hands as she got all the pieces set up. Normally Weiss would be cross about having to set up both sets of pieces but she found she didn't mind at all right now.

"First or second?" Weiss asked. The proper question would be 'white or black?' because white was always supposed to go first, but Ruby insisted that rule was ridiculous. She wanted to be black every game and she wanted Weiss to be white because that matched their color schemes.

Honestly, Weiss couldn't really fault that logic.

"Mmmm… First."

As was her habit, Ruby opened with a pawn to E4 and, after Weiss stepped her own pawn up to block, then moved her queen out. On the second turn. Because she was crazy.

That wasn't quite accurate. It was because Ruby had decided the Queen was her, and she kept trying to have the queen be the 'hero' of the game and capture as many pieces as possible.

She'd also sacrificed her queen on multiple occasions to save lesser pieces, including 'Weiss', her white bishop, a habit Weiss found worrying if that's something that translated to real life…

The annoying thing about Ruby's insistence on opening with queen plays was that Weiss never learned any defenses against it. Winter had never been so brazen with her queen so she'd never had to. It meant that she was usually forced to wing things instead of getting to set up a play she was familiar with, like her preferred Argus System or Solitas Defense.

And Weiss wasn't very good at winging things. So far she'd always been able to win without too much difficulty because of Ruby's reckless queen gameplay, but other than that fluke the girl was actually improving incredibly quickly and the games were closer than Weiss would have liked. She wasn't outclassing Ruby to the same degree Winter was outclassing her before she left home.

Weiss played defense, trying to catch Ruby's queen in a couple traps with her knights and a bishop, and pulled her Dust case over and popped it open.

"We should try playing and doing the Dust exercises at the same time," she suggested. That seemed like a fun mental exercise.

Ruby drew her eyebrows together in a subtle, watered-down Ruby pout, though.

"C'mon, it would be good practice," Weiss pressed.

"You already beat me up in chess _and_ casting and now you want to do both at the same time?" Ruby grumped.

"I—no! I'm not… okay, first of all, casting isn't a competition. You're just training to get better and I'm helping and you _are_ getting better! And second, _again_, I wouldn't be beating you so badly in chess if you weren't so damn reckless with your queen!"

She punctuated her point by taking her turn, capturing Ruby's queen with her knight.

"And now you killed me," Ruby pouted.

"Well you were asking for it," Weiss said, making sure to visibly grin to make it clear she was just teasing.

Ruby pouted.

They played in relative quiet for about ten minutes, occasionally doing one of the fundamental Dust exercises at Weiss' insistence, before the runaway girl showed up. Weiss spotted her nervously making her way over from the monument and, when the girl caught her eye, jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Yang. That was enough of a contribution as far as she was concerned. This was Yang's project, ill-advised as it was.

The girl came over and was walking past their picnic setup when she noticed Ruby and stopped.

"Uh, hi. I'm Emerald," she said awkwardly.

"Ruby," replied Ruby with a small wave. "I'm Yang's sister."

"Ah. Cool." The girl looked between Yang, who was approaching, and Ruby a couple times. Likely thinking what Weiss had when she'd met these dolts: '_How in the name of aura are these two related?'_

"Wait, are you on the same team?" the homeless girl asked.

Ruby nodded. "I got bumped up a couple years."

"Whoa."

"She's being modest," Weiss cut in. "She stopped a gang of lowlife thugs from robbing a Dust shop and a professor and the headmaster saw and invited her to join the incoming class on full scholarship." She gave her partner a smile.

Blushing slightly, Ruby looked down and poked her knee. "Yeah, that too."

"Hope I can get one of those," the intruder muttered.

Doubtful. There was no way this random homeless girl was as talented as Ruby.

"Well, let's see what you can do," Yang said, finally stomping close enough to join the conversation. "Emerald, this is my partner, Babe von Sexybutt."

"My name is _Blake._"

They shook hands.

"Hi. So… _partners_, huh?"

Yang grinned maniacally at Homeless Girl's question and Blake blushed.

"Not that," Blake said quickly. "We got assigned partners during initiation by… walking into each other in the woods."

"Oh."

"You didn't have to protest _that_ hard," Yang grinned at Blake, earning her a light kick in the shin. "Now c'mon, Emerald. Let's get away from these _nerds_ and do some fighting."

Weiss stuck her tongue out at the blonde before the three walked away.

She and Ruby kept playing chess, Ruby watching the "training" going on behind Weiss most of the time.

"She any good?" Weiss finally asked, feeling a little hurt and peeved that Ruby was distracted from her.

Ruby shrugged a bit. "She's aight. Not really Beacon material, but she seems to at least have balance and coordination. Maybe she can get there."

"Mm." That was unconvincing. If Ruby, who was pretty much the most encouraging person Weiss had ever met, was saying _maybe_?

Although it might just be the mood she was in.

They ended up playing two games (both wins for Weiss, the first handy, the second a lot closer) before the other three came over to rest and eat.

"Did you want a sandwich, Em?" Yang asked as they settled down around the chessboard between Ruby and Emerald.

Weiss was very cognizant of the homeless girl sitting on her blanket but had the feeling she could ask her to get off.

"I'm okay. I ate already."

'_How are you affording food?'_ Weiss wanted to ask. Or rather, she didn't want to ask because she suspected the answer would either be stealing or dumpster diving and she didn't need to hear either of those things.

"So you decently quick and you've got good footwork," Blake said as she unwrapped her reuben. "You need to stop slashing so much, though. Those knives are better for stabbing, at least until you sharpen the blades."

"Yeah," Homeless Girl agreed.

"What would help you most is getting you an actual huntress-class weapon," Yang added.

"Don't really know how to go about getting one of those."

"Hm. Well our uncle made ours for us. Melted down one of his old weapons for Ruby and my dad's old gauntlets for me. Don't suppose you've got any huntsman family members to give you hand-med-owns?"

"Not that I know of."

"Durn. Blake, how'd you get Gambol Shroud?"

Blake's eyes went wide. "Uh… I found it."

"'_Found_' it?" Weiss repeated.

"Yep."

"Where exactly did you 'find' a weapon like that?"

"... Around."

Yang laughed at that. "Just tripped over it at a weapons testing facility, ya know?"

Blake looked away.

"And Weiss," Yang continued, "I'm guessing you just, like, bought yours?"

"I didn't _buy_ it," Weiss huffed. "I had it custom built."

"That's… the same thing."

"It is _not_!"

"It's basically just buying before it's made!"

Weiss blinked. "Well… yes, but it's still not the same thing."

Yang laughed and turned back to Homeless Girl with an apologetic shrug.

The girl shrugged back. "Well I can't buy one and I doubt I'll be 'finding'" — she put air quotes around the word — "one anywhere any time soon."

"I resent those air quotes," Blake muttered.

"Hey, Ruby?" Yang said, turning to her sister. Weiss thought it was just another attempt to pull the girl out of her funk and into a conversation, but apparently it was something more. "Didn't you say the forgemaster guy is having you smith some practice weapons before he lets you make your new Crescent Rose?"

Ruby nibbled the end of her straw, which irked Weiss. "Yeah?"

"Well, what if you gave one of those practice weapons to Emerald?"

"I'm pretty sure that would be a misuse of school resources," Weiss interjected.

"Shut up, Weiss," Yang said, not even turning her way.

"Hey!"

"So what do you think?" Yang asked Ruby again. "Could you make her a weapon?"

Ruby slowly straightened up. "That… could be really cool! Actually getting to make a weapon for somebody? Hm… What would you want?" she asked Homeless Girl.

"Um… I don't know?" The girl twisted the skin of her forearm nervously with her other hand. "Apparently I like slashing."

"Scythes are good for slashing!" Ruby exclaimed, sounding like her normal, animated self.

"S-scythes? Aren't those for farming?"

"No, they're for reaping, gosh!" Ruby folded her arms and leaned back against the tree with a grumpy grunt.

"Oh. Right. Uh…"

"I think she prefers smaller stuff," Blake said. "Maybe you could make her a kama?"

"Pretty sure the only one here that thinks punctuation can be used as a weapon is Weiss," Yang grinned.

"Not _comma_, you absolute blonde," Blake laughed. "Kama. K-A-M-A. It's basically a small, one-handed scythe. Here." Blake pulled out her scroll and brought up an image and showed it to the rest of them. Sure enough, it did indeed look like a handheld scythe.

"Whoooa," Ruby breathed. "I had no idea those were a thing! I'll do it! Wait, did you want that?" She directed the question at their guest-intruder.

"Uh… sure? It looks like something that would feel good for me."

"Sweet!" Ruby was now fully animated and alive. "And I can probably also make it a pistol! And, and… do you want two? You seemed to like dual-wielding those knives."

The girl scratched her arm. "I already feel bad asking for _one_."

Weiss snorted, which earned her a glare from Yang, but whatever. This girl was clearly freeloading off of them and taking advantage of Yang's good heart.

"Pssh, don't worry about it," Ruby said, waving a hand dismissively. "They've got tons of metal and gun barrels and stuff at the forge. Won't be a problem. And if it is, Weiss can pay for it!"

"I can what now?"

"Well that's settled!" Yang practically shouted, jumping to her feet. "C'mon, Emerald. Let's see how fast you dodge."

"Dodge what?"

"My fists for starters. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll throw Blake at you."

"Uh, no," Blake said, standing too.

"Like you could stop me," Yang teased, earning another kick on the shin.

The three wandered off to play in the grass again like children, leaving Weiss in peace with Ruby. They got back to their games, Weiss still nibbling on her pastrami on rye between moves because she was a slow eater.

"Nine millimeter's probably a good caliber for a scythe-pistol, yeah?" Ruby asked, her brow furrowed as whatever silly gears existed in her head turned. "Like it'll hit hard enough without being heavy and unwieldy. It would kinda just end up being a long-barrelled pistol with a funky bayonet at the end, huh?"

"I suppose so," Weiss hedged. She didn't really know what Ruby was talking about. She couldn't picture whatever it was Ruby was seeing in her head and she didn't really want to think about it anyway because she didn't approve.

"Although the magazines would need to be pretty small to keep the weapon balanced, and that would mean she'd need to reload a lot, and it'll be hard to reload if she's dual-wielding…" She squinted at Weiss, though Weiss got the impression she was just thinking and not really looking to Weiss for any sort of answer.

Weiss shrugged.

After a moment more of contemplation, Ruby shrugged back and refocused on the chessboard. "I'll figure it out," she decided.

"I'm sure you will," Weiss replied. That wasn't entirely true: she had no idea if Ruby could do this. She was certainly enthusiastic enough about weaponsmithing but Weiss had yet to see her make anything. But today was… the day that it was for Ruby and Weiss felt the tiny fib was worth cheering her partner up.

Sure enough, Ruby gave her a small smile, then switched to a smug grin and moved her knight. "Check."

Of course she fell into that trap. She simply couldn't resist making plays with her queen.

Three moves later, Weiss had her checkmated.

"This game is stupid," Ruby pouted. That was normal. She had angry words for chess and the 'chess balance team' (whatever that meant) after pretty much every game. She hadn't quit, though, and didn't even seem to get discouraged for the next game.

"Well seeing as it's not sentient, I don't think it's the _game_ that's stupid," Weiss teased. Kind of a mean joke, but she tried to make it clear that she was joking with her expression.

Ruby narrowed her eyes. "I 'spose you're right. Fine, _you're_ stupid!"

Weiss snorted a laugh and started resetting her pieces. "Clearly you've got this all figured out. I wonder why you can't seem to—"

"Essscuse me?"

The interruption annoyed Weiss. When she turned to find a little blonde girl, with pigtails and overalls, with her hands clasped in front of her, that mollified her a little bit. She was still annoyed, though.

The girl must have been… four? Five? Weiss had no idea how to gauge children's ages. Behind her stood what appeared to be her older sister, same tan skin and blonde hair, though the girl wore her hair in a nice braid that was far less visually offensive than _pigtails._ She was wearing crocs with socks, though, which… _uggggh._ Behind them both, far enough that he clearly was just watching and not participating in the conversation, was a middle-aged man that Weiss presumed was their father.

Weiss just wanted to enjoy a nice day out with her team. First they had hobo girl coming in and making herself the center of attention and now these randos were here interrupting Weiss' time with Ruby. Why couldn't people just go away?

Ruby seemed confused, though not nearly as offended at the intrusion nearly as much as Weiss.

"Hi, cutie!" she cooed, looking a little nervous. "What's up?"

The little girl grabbed the pinky of her left hand with her right and looked up and back at her sister, who gave her a nod and two thumbs up. She turned back to Ruby. "Are you hunchesses?"

"Yep!" Ruby confirmed happily. "We're students at Beacon. Um… I'm Ruby!" She held her hand out to the little girl, looking a bit unsure of herself.

Weiss was glad Ruby hadn't introduced her as well. She wanted to do that herself. The whole 'let me introduce the person with me' thing seemed to be something men liked to do.

"You gotta shake her hand, Bailey," the older girl said. When the little girl, Bailey, didn't seem to understand, the older girl knelt down beside her and pulled the hand that was balled up around the pinky finger and put it into Ruby's.

Ruby shook the little hand with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Bailey."

"Nice tah… meet you!" Bailey replied, break in her words a pause for breath or a pause to figure out what to say or whatever reasoning there was behind the weirdness of little children speech.

From the way the older girl was excitedly shaking, Weiss had a sneaking suspicion that coming over here was more her idea than Bailey's.

"I'm Weiss." Weiss didn't want to touch icky strangers so she just gave a tiny wave.

Bailey waved back, her arm swinging widely from side to side like she didn't have control of her motor functions.

"Are you—" the older girl started, then stopped when Weiss and Ruby turned to look at her, her eyes going wide with nervousness. "Um, you said your name is Ruby? Are you the girl that stopped that robbery and got admitted into Beacon for it a year early?"

It was kind of an absurd feeling to have _Ruby_ be the publicly known individual instead of Weiss. At first it kind of irked her, but then she realized she like it better this way. Her renown came only from her last name and it was a fame she was fine doing without. She'd get famous on her own by being the best huntress in the world.

"_Two_ years early," Ruby corrected proudly.

"How'd you know about that?" Weiss asked the girl.

"It was in the papers," the girl said. "I read the Huntsmen section every Sunday." Her expression became a bit self conscious. "I'm, uh, a bit of a Hunt geek."

"Me too!" Ruby said, putting the girl right at ease.

"Is it true that Nidas Rustheart is one of your professors?"

"Yeah! He's awesome."

"He's a huge dork and com_plete_ly unprofessional," Weiss amended.

"Wei-eisss," Ruby whined.

"What? It's true."

"Yeah, that's _why_ he's awesome."

"I think you and I use that word very differently."

"Yeah, you use it wrong."

"Wrong_ly_."

"No you."

"I've been trying to follow you but I couldn't find you on Blabber," the girl said, cutting into their bickering.

"Oh, yeah." Ruby scratched her head. "Dad hasn't let me make one. Says I'm too young."

The girl gave her a pained look and they seemed to share a 'freaking fathers, am I right?' moment. "Well, I could give you mine and then when you make one you could shoot me a message so I can follow you? I-I can be your biggest fan! Like, I've actually _met_ you, and I already have a slot in my binder ready for when your trading card gets released, and you're from the place where I was born—"

"You're from Patch too?!"

"Patch!" the little Bailey squealed, throwing her hands up. Probably just excited to recognize a word in the conversation.

The older sister patted Bailey on the head. "Yeah! I don't remember it much, though. We moved for my dad's job when I was, like, seven."

Weiss distinctly remembered her life when she was seven, but then again her memory was abnormal.

Ruby nodded, looking like she hadn't totally heard. "Hm. Hey, how 'bout you could follow Weiss, and then when I make a Blubber account she can let you know what my… tag… thingy is."

"Uh, yeah, sure." The girl was clearly nervous to turn to Weiss or address her directly, which Weiss didn't understand at all; what about her wasn't congenial and welcoming? "What's your handle?" she managed to get out as she pulled out her scroll.

"Weiss. that's W-E-I-S-S, underscore Schnee."

The girl's eyes bugged out.

'_Yep,'_ Weiss sighed internally. '_There it is.'_

"Yes, _that_ Schnee," she said tiredly, answering the question she knew was coming next.

The girl blinked a couple times, then tapped her scroll a bit. "Holy crap."

"Hoe-y cwap!" Bailey echoed.

"Sssh, Bailey no!" the sister hushed, glancing back at their father. "Don't say that." She looked at her scroll a bit more before looking at Weiss in shock. "You're the future CEO of the SDC?"

Weiss just nodded.

"You're kinda rich, huh?"

"Kinda," Weiss echoed.

"Um… I'm Allison?" the girl said awkwardly, like the knowledge of who she was talking to made her realize she needed to introduce herself… as a question.

"Okay," Weiss replied, not really sure what to say. She'd already given her name. "... Nice to meet you," she decided on, though it was kind of a lie. This girl was interrupting her day. She looked to Ruby to rescue her from this conversation.

After looking at Weiss' face for a moment, Ruby seemed to understand and turned back to the girl. "So yeah! Just follow Weiss and then when I can make my Bloober account I'll get your account from her and follow you and then you can follow me and then we'll all be a big happy follower-family."

"_You're_ gonna follow _me_?" Allison repeated incredulously.

Ruby shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

Allison nodded to herself a bit, shaking off her shock. "You know, you should just make it. You don't have to wait for your _dad's_ permission. You're in _Beacon_ now, you're basically an adult."

Ruby narrowed her eyes. "This is truuuue…"

"That's not at all how that works," Weiss cut in.

"Yes it is!" Ruby and Allison both objected at the same time.

Well it was nice to see Ruby being herself again, even if it meant she was now being annoying. Maybe between this conversation and her excitement about building Homeless Girl a weapon, she'd be okay tonight?

Weiss' scroll dinged a notification at her, telling her Alliesaurus had followed her on Blabber. As far as online handles went, that was pretty good. Cute, clever, related to her actual name, and it didn't substitute letters for numbers for no good reason like Ruby's scroll ID.

"I wish I had your card already so you could sign it," Allison muttered. "Or even just my binder, you coulda signed that. Wish I'd known I was gonna meet you today."

"I knew," Ruby said with a sage nod.

Allison's eyes bugged out again. "Can you see the future?"

Ruby cackled. "Nah, I'm just pulling your leg. My semblance is way cooler than future sight. Check it out!"

With that, Ruby switched into her semblance and raced in a wide circle around the clearing. The whole lap was nearly as long as a track lap, four hundred yards, yet she cleared it in a little over six seconds. The commotion rattled nearby tourists and Weiss saw Yang look over at their picnic set up and take in the intruders.

Then Ruby skidded to a stop where she'd been sitting, completely crumpling Weiss' blanket.

"Ruby!" Weiss leaned forward and swatted her partner's legs. "Get off! You're ruining my blanket!"

Ruby didn't respond, though, because she was looking around in confusion.

Weiss was about to ask her what was wrong when she was interrupted by the child. As the rose petals started drifting down around them, Bailey let out a squeal of laughter and started chasing them around, trying to swat them out of the air like they were bubbles. "Edahbuh!" she giggled.

Weiss wasn't entirely sure that was even supposed to be a word.

It was then that Yang walked up, hands on her hips, smiling at the scene. Blake was still off a little ways running through attack patterns with Homeless Girl. If this girl liked to dual wield knives, it made sense she'd have the most in common with Blake when it came to fighting style.

"What's goin' on here?" Yang asked.

"I've got fans," Ruby preened.

"Oh?" Yang looked at the two girls, the younger of which was paying no attention at all to them and was just chasing petals around. Whenever she caught one she got immediately bored of it and dropped it to go chase another that was still riding the wind.

Allison gave an awkward wave. "Hi. Yeah, I, uh, read about Ruby in the paper, and… stuff."

Weiss wasn't sure what other 'stuff' there was. That was basically it. She read about Ruby and decided to fangirl over her and now apparently thought they shared some sort of connection.

Stupid. Her team was the only connections Ruby needed. And, Weiss supposed, her father. And uncle. And… dog? Assuming it wasn't an ugly one. They'd said it was a corgi, so it was probably cute enough to be acceptable.

"—be an acronym of all of you, not just your name?" Allison was saying. Weiss was a little lost, having tuned out a bit of conversation, but she also wasn't sure she cared. She mostly just wanted these strangers to go away.

"It is!" Ruby said. "It's R-_W_-B-Y. Weiss is the W."

Weiss gave a tiny wave.

"Ah," Allison nodded. "That's… kinda confusing."

"Yeah, I still think Weiss should change her name to something with a U to make things simpler," Yang said, grinning mischievously down at Weiss. "Like… _Ulga_."

Weiss stared at her blankly. "I like you better when you're quiet."

"When is that?"

"When you're somewhere else."

Yang laughed loudly. "Alright, that was good." She extended a fist towards Weiss.

Weiss knew she was supposed to do a 'fist bump' here, but that was dumb and thus, she refused. Instead, she stared pointedly at the fist, then at Yang.

Yang rolled her eyes and turned, walking back over to Blake and her lost cause project. "Whatever. You dorks have fun!" she called over her shoulder.

"How long do you guys think you'll be out here?" Allison asked, the question phrased for both of them but her posture turned entirely to Ruby. "'Cause I bet I can get my dad to let us rush home for my binder and come back. It would only take, like, an hour…?" She looked at Ruby with big, pleading eyes.

"Uh, I'm not sure…" Ruby looked at Weiss questioningly.

'_Oh, sure. Force me to be the bad guy.'_

"We need to get going soon if we want to do any of the positioning and callout stuff in the Battle Center before Class," she said.

"True," Ruby agreed with a pout.

"It was _your_ idea," Weiss reminded her.

"I know, I knooow. Hmph." She turned to Allison. "Are you going to the Vytal Tournament?"

"I totally _can_, if I beg hard enough. Why?"

"We could meet up! And we'll have our test print sheets by then I'm pretty sure. That's what my uncle said. So I can sign one of those and give it to you!"

From the expression on the girl's face, you'd think she just won the lottery. Weiss wanted to ask what the hell a 'test print sheet' even was, but she didn't want to look ignorant in front of a stranger. And Ruby had said '_we_' will have them like her team was included in that, which made Weiss feel even more like she was supposed to know.

"Allison," the man waiting awkwardly behind them called. When Allison turned to look at him, he tapped his watch (apparently all fathers wear watches because they can't wear _actual_ jewelry). "Stop bothering them. It's time to go."

'_Yes, please stop bothering us.'_

"But… Bailey's—"

"Allison."

"Darn it." Allison turned back to Ruby. "Could I grab a picture with you real quick? Maybe?"

"Sure!"

Weiss made sure to scoot well out of the way of the shot. She'd had experience with journalists and paparazzi snapping her photo at events and she'd gotten over the discomfort, but this felt far too disconnected yet personal.

The little one noticed what was going on and ran towards her sister, arms out wide, yelling, "Cheeeeese!"

"Bailey, no! You can't be in the picture!" Allison tried to push the little one away from herself and Ruby.

"What?" Ruby squeaked. "Why not?"

"Causssse… I want to show this pic off to my friends! If I have my baby sister in it, it'll be totally lame!"

Ruby frowned. "But baby sisters are cool," she said quietly.

"Ugh! Whatever." Allison pulled her sister into her side and pressed down on her head, trying to obscure her from the picture as she held her scroll out for a selfie. "Say Beacon!"

"Beaconnnn!"

Weiss couldn't help rolling her eyes at the display. They were all so obnoxiously happy over something so dumb.

"Allison, come on!" the father called.

"Okayokay!" Allison took a moment to check the picture, then dashed a bit away before turning back to Ruby. "Bye, thank you! It was so awesome to meet you!"

Ruby waved back. "You too! We'll see you later!"

Bailey ran back to her father with the arm-flailing gait of a drunkard. Or child, apparently. "Daddy, look what I got!" she yelled, a rose petal balled up in her tiny fist. Cute, though the crumpled rose petal irked Weiss a bit. They were special and pretty and deserved better treatment than that.

The man gave Weiss and Ruby a perfunctory wave as he led his chatty daughters away.

Weiss breathed in and out a deep sigh of relief, noting that Ruby seemed to relax a bit too.

'_Talking to people makes her nervous,'_ Weiss remembered. They were sort of similar in that way, though for Ruby it was self-conscious nerves about embarrassing herself and for Weiss it was just a general distrust and dislike of people.

Ruby's shoulders slumped a bit as she exhaled. "Well that was nice," she said quietly.

"Mhm," Weiss hummed, noncommittal. She didn't want to spoil the mood, though, so she made up for her lack of enthusiasm by giving her partner a smile.

The smile she got back was the tame, watered-down smile from earlier today. Already back to grieving?

Had Ruby been faking her happiness that whole conversation?

… No. There was no way. Ruby wasn't the type of person to fake or filter herself…

Right?

"You mind if we take a break from the chess for a bit?" Ruby asked, rubbing at her temples. "Kinda want to just relax for a bit." She pulled the cloth of her cloak tighter around her shoulders and huddled in on herself.

"Ah," Weiss intoned, a bit disappointed. "Okay." She scooted back to sit against the tree next to Ruby. She watched her other two teammates and their hobo apprentice in silence for a bit. Blake was using Yang as a demonstration dummy, showing the girl how to target slashes and place her feet to maximize power in her swings.

Weiss admired Blake's form. It was more fluid than Weiss', focused more on moving side to side than forward and back, and she slashed where Weiss would thrust. It was nice to watch, though it looked like it would be exhausting to keep up in a fight. Not something Weiss wanted to emulate, but she could admire it.

"Can I have some air Dust?" Ruby asked after a couple minutes.

"Of course!" It delighted Weiss that Ruby had taken to practicing her Dust casting. She'd more or less gotten the hang of the Basic Wind Technique B that Professor Goodwitch had had her do in front of the class. She needed to work on keeping the ball of air tighter and smaller and was still having some trouble with the rotation reversing, but she was able to do it about eighty percent of the time now.

When Weiss handed Ruby a tiny, light green Dust crystal from her case, though, Ruby turned it into a lopsided, flailing tornado in her hand.

"Ruby, that's not the exercise," Weiss admonished.

"I knowww, I'm just playing," Ruby whined like she was that Bailey girl's age.

Weiss wanted to snap that her 'just playing' cost fourteen lien, but not when Ruby was like this. And besides, who actually cared about fourteen lien?

Ruby swiped her hand out, sending the magic air out in a wave. "Wind slash!" she whispered.

'_Dork,'_ Weiss thought with a smile.

She pulled the Dust case over so Ruby could grab whatever she wanted, then started practicing herself, with fire Dust. She was skilled enough even with fire that she did an advanced form instead of the trivial circle that the professor had assigned, a figure eight with two streams going in opposite directions. Weiss hated using fire, but she really liked this exercise; it was hypnotic. She also really needed to practice her fire and earth casting, as she'd been putting them off for a while because she didn't like feeling like she was bad with them.

Plus, she really enjoyed showing up Yang on her best element.

Weiss watched a bit of the other two training Homeless Girl as she sat with Ruby. Blake was teaching her how to balance herself and move her feet so she could dodge Yang's attacks. She was pretty bad at it, only really able to dodge about thirty percent of the strikes, and when she got het her aura would flicker even though Yang wasn't going anywhere close to all out.

Yeah, she wasn't going to get anywhere. Even Jaune or Remus would knock her on her ass.

"Wish I'd brought my violin," Weiss remarked as they waited.

"That woulda been nice," Ruby agreed quietly.

It was nice that she thought so.

A little while later, Weiss checked the time to find it was already 11:30. They'd wanted to get to the Battle Center at noon so they could spend an hour working on callouts before Professor Rustheart's class at 1:00.

"Yang!" she called out. When Yang looked over, Weiss tapped her wrist like the man from earlier sans the watch.

"Already?!" Yang yelled back.

Weiss nodded. Technically, they didn't _have_ to leave for another ten minutes, but… Weiss wanted to be done here. Homeless Girl had taken enough of their time already.

The three of them wrapped up and slowly walked back over while Weiss shooed Ruby off the blanket and rolled it up. There was grass and dirt sticking onto the bottom side, which was _annoying_. She'd have to run this through the wash.

"... to keep your guard up," Blake was saying as they came into earshot. "And stop leaning so much on your front leg."

"I remember," Homeless Girl said. "I'll practice."

"And work on keeping your aura up," Yang said. "All the time. Never let it drop. I know it takes a lot of concentration now, but eventually it'll be like breathing."

"Never had to _learn_ to breathe," the girl grumped.

Yang snorted. "Yeah, well breathing is for normies. You gotta train to be a superhero."

"Hate that word," Blake muttered.

"What, superhero?"

"No, _normie_." She waved her hands. "It's such a _dumb_ word!"

"Your face is a dumb word!"

"Weiss, back me up here," Blake said. "It's a stupid word, right?"

"All words are stupid when Yang says them," Weiss answered honestly.

"Hey!"

"But it would still be stupid even if _you_ were the one saying it, right?" Blake pressed.

"Well I would never say it, so… yes, I suppose it's a stupid word."

"Ruby, tell your partner her face is stupid!" Yang practically yelled.

Ruby was standing a few feet away, eyes on the ground as she kicked around some of her rose petals that were laying on the grass. "Huh? What?" she asked, looking up.

"Nothing," Weiss sighed. "Your sister's an idiot. Let's go back to Beacon." She looked pointedly at the intruder.

"R-right," the girl stammered. "Uh, thank you guys. I'll see, uh, you later?"

"For sure!" Yang agreed. "See ya, Em. Hopefully we'll have some weapons for you the next time we meet. Right, Rubes?"

"Mhm."

"Bye," Blake added.

The girl walked one way, the team walked another.

"So, to the Battle Center?" Blake asked.

"Yep!" Weiss chirped, the relief of being alone with her team again infecting her voice.

"So… do we need to make a chessboard or something?" Yang asked.

They stood in one of the fluorescent-lit, dirt-floored battle rooms in the Battle Center. Three hundred feet by three hundred feet of open space for them to train in.

Weiss waited for Ruby to say something, to have one of her clever ideas, but she was back to being withdrawn and solemn, flipping through her playbook without reading any of the words. "I supposed that would help us visualize things," Weiss reasoned. "Um… How, though?"

"Can you draw lines with earth Dust?" Blake asked.

"Um… maybe?" The lines would have to be really long. When she had discussed what they'd be doing here with Ruby last night, they'd decided each square should be ten feet by ten feet, so she'd need to make eighteen eighty foot long symmetrical, evenly spaced lines… That would be hard. She wasn't sure she'd be able to control her aura eighty feet away…

Although if she started with herself in the middle of the board, she'd only have to extend her aura in forty feet in any cardinal direction, a little further for the corners. Apply Pythagorean Theorem… The corners would be 44.72ish feet away? Not too bad. Although this would still be incredibly difficult. Earth was her worst element and she wasn't quite confident she'd be able to control it well enough to make such a large, symmetrical form.

Yang and Blake were both looking at her questioningly and expectantly while Ruby was still staring at her feet, swinging Crescent Rose around herself in its rifle form.

'_Crap.' _Weiss always hated dealing with the expectations of those close to her. She always felt like she came up short. For Father, for Klein, for Winter… Strangely, she'd never felt that way with Mother, though the time when Mother cared enough to actually _have_ any expectations of her had long since passed.

Her palms were getting clammy from the pressure, which was absolutely ridiculous. This wasn't something big and important. It was just the four of them practicing some stuff together. Rationally, Weiss knew none of them would mind if she couldn't do this, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that she was failing. If they—

"Weiss?"

Weiss blinked rapidly, snapping out of her train of thought. "Huh?"

Yang was looking at her with her Concerned Mom face. "You alright? You look like you're hyperventilating."

"I'm fine." Weiss rubbed her palms against her skirt to dry them off.

"_I_ could totally make the chessboard," Yang quickly offered. "Just get me a big stick, or… Ruby! Give me Crescent Rose!... Ruby?"

"Hm? What?" Ruby stirred from her thoughts.

Yang paused for a moment. She was turned away from Weiss to look at Ruby so Weiss couldn't see her expression, but she could imagine the worried frown pretty clearly.

"Lemme borrow Crescent Rose," Yang repeated.

Ruby pouted and hugged her weapon to her chest. "No, mine!"

"I just—"

"It's okay," Weiss cut in. "I have an idea."

She didn't have fantastic control over earth Dust, but she had great control over her glyphs.

She'd brought Myrtenaster's case with her to the Battle Center and she quickly glyph-skated over to it to grab a canister of earth Dust to load into her sword's cylinder. She rushed back out to the open space where her team waited.

She started small, just summoning two white glyphs 'diagonal' from each other that she eyeballed to get about ten feet in diameter. She pushed aura into the hilt of her rapier where it flowed along the silver embedded underneath and to the active chamber in Myrtenaster's cylinder, triggering the earth Dust within. The magic started to flow towards the blade, but Weiss willed it to instead follow the invisible threads connecting her to her glyphs.

The middle rings of the glyphs glowed green with the magic getting introduced to them and Weiss force the Dust to take the form of short, square blocks of rock that rose about four inches off the ground. The magically formed rock was a slightly darker brown than ground beneath their feet.

Good. It meant it would be easy to do a checkered effect. She'd just need to make thirty more of these squares. Make them the 'black' spaces on the chessboard.

The two squares she'd made used about a third of the magic from the Dust, and Weiss quickly made more glyphs to have a place to send the energy building up at the base of her blade. This would be one of those situations where it would be better to have the pressurized flow canisters she'd taught Ruby about.

If her affinity for earth was higher, she'd be able to get more use out of each of these Dust canisters. She ended up needing to use all six of the earth Dust canisters she had in her case. Annoying, but it is what it is. And it was worth it because at the end of it she had a huge chessboard arranged on the ground, dark brown on slightly darker brown.

… Hmm. Now that she took a step back and looked at it, it was pretty hard to distinguish the spaces from each other…

"It's kinda hard to—"

"I know," Weiss agreed, flustered, cutting off Blake. "Sorry."

She did the same thing as before, but this time filled the 'white' spaces of the board in with ice Dust. It only took two capsules instead of six, and it took only twenty seconds instead of almost a minute.

Weiss liked ice.

"I guess I could have just done the ice squares, huh," she realized abjectly. If she'd just made the light blue spaces on the board, they would have been easy to differentiate from the base ground. That was stupidly inefficient of her. Not that she'd have difficulty replacing the wasted Dust, but still… she felt dumb.

Yang put her hands on her hips and looked around, impressed. "Have I mentioned how awesome it is that you're on our team?" she asked.

Weiss blushed, her heart doing a happy little dance in her chest. "You could stand to mention it more."

Grinning, Yang squinted at her. "Naaah, Ruby says it enough for all of us. Right, Peanut?!" She yelled the last part at her brooding little sister.

"Hm? Yep! What?"

Yang 'tsked' at her sister and walked over to put her arm around the small girl. "Where do you keep going, doofus?"

Weiss thought that was a strange question, considering she knew? Right?

"Nowhere," Ruby mumbled.

Yang ruffled Ruby's hair. "How's it feel to have a fan?" she asked.

Ruby smiled at the ground. "Pretty cool."

"Yeah? Weird, Uncle Qrow told me that his biggest fan is super annoying."

"What? Who?" Ruby's eyes went wide.

"You."

The innocent curiosity disappeared and Ruby gave a grumpy glare as she pushed Yang away. "Yer dumb and fat!"

"True true," Yang agreed easily. "Now come on, you need to help Weiss explain ya'll's nerd shit to me and Blake 'cause she sucks at it."

Weiss bristled. "I do _not_! I haven't even started!"

"Yeah, well we've all had to listen to you try to explain Dust equations…" Yang started.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Yeah, what's wrong with her Weissplanations?" Ruby piped up with a frown. "She teaches stuff good."

"Well," Weiss corrected reflexively.

"I've heard it both ways," Ruby said.

"Then you've heard it wrong." Weiss turned to Yang and put one hand on her hip and pointed at the blonde with her sword. "Now you, shut up and get your binder and don't sass me ever again!"

"Oh Goddess, she has an Angry Professor alter ego," Yang muttered, walking over to grab her binder where she'd left it on the ground.

"Please don't give us homework," Blake pleaded with a twinkle in her eye.

"Well if you learn well now, you won't _need_ any," Weiss replied archily.

A stifled laugh escaped Blake. "As long as you're on this power trip, you should give Yang detention."

"Hey!"

"I am not on a power trip!" Weiss argued. "Now… shut up and open your binders to page one… Er, two."

Her teammates all followed her lead, Yang rolling her eyes exaggeratedly, Ruby still uncharacteristically quiet and Blake staying characteristically so.

"Ahem!" Weiss started. "So… keep in mind we'll probably change things to curate them for our team, but… here goes. So… so… The idea behind this is to use our understanding of a chessboard to give us concise callouts for positioning on the battlefield and to use chess pieces as descriptors for behavioural roles for us to use so that we can quickly and easily convey orders in the heat of battle. I—"

Yang's hand went up.

"_What_, Yang?" Weiss sighed.

"I'm already lost."

"Freaking—! Ugh! I don't know what you want. I'm using words that make sense. Maybe try just thinking about what you're hearing for _one_ sec—"

"Weiss," Blake cut her off, extending a hand out as if to calm her. "Relaaax. You're probably right, and what you said probably made sense, but it was kinda esoteric and hard to keep up with."

Weiss huffed. Blake was smart! If even _she_ was confused… But Weiss didn't know what she needed to fix because she didn't think there was anything broken.

…

"Ruby, can you help?" she asked.

Ruby gave her a small smile and nod. "'Course," she said quietly, and that was all it took for Weiss to calm down, relaxing muscles she hadn't realized were tense.

Ruby took a moment to gaze down thoughtfully at the page in her binder. She took a deep breath… then looked up.

"Okay…"

* * *

**Hey guys! Sorry this took a few days longer than I'd anticipated. I put too much stuff in here and felt like I needed to keep going because I wanted this stuff to be in Weiss' POV so I kinda trapped myself into a long-ass chapter. In fact, I'd initially planned for this chapter to end and the end of this day, but that would end up being a bajillion words so I'm just gonna cut it here and adapt for Ruby's POV next chapter. **

**Hope you liked it!**


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